Post-it‘s with passwords aren’t the worst in security. Physical access to the note is required to get the password. One post-it under each keyboard with a different password is better than the same password shared widely.
GitLab is a good example of excellent software. It has a proper business model and has built a great community.
Most Linux desktop applications sadly have no good business model. If you have a business model you can pay developers, designers, support, writers, etc.
Free web applications and free FLOSS have lead to people not valuing software you are right. If there is much good software and services available for free, why should I pay?
As a developer I have bought many pieces of software to make my work easier: Git Tower, Kaleidoscope, PaintCode, Dash, Reveal, Charles, Acorn, Paw, are what come to mind right now. I perceive all of these tools' value to be high.
Don't want to add fuel to the acquired-by-microsoft rumor fire, but when Xamarin was being acquired they had a hiring freeze in place for the duration of the process. I understand that is standard practice for acquisitions, but might be wrong on that.
Considering about 180 people are being made redundant, they'd be in a pickle if they hired new people for positions that could have been filled by those leaving.
Using only Darwin instead of Linux or FreeBSD was never really attractive. Contributing upstream is difficult to impossible, since Apple was never set up to take your contributions. The different Darwin distributions never really developed a direction or a unique feature set.
The only feature that sets Darwin apart from FreeBSD is launchd instead of init. The rest is mostly downsides like a weird file system. You can get dtrace on many other OSs today too.
