Well I'd argue that the little guys are still plenty powerful in this space. Some of the largest JavaScript libraries we're only a few people (some we're hired by big companies, but they were alone for a long time).
>some we're hired by big companies, but they were alone for a long time
I would imagine they would've been happy with staying alone rather than being managed by a boss, but sadly no one bothers to donate to most projects.
I'm not talking about your average software developer, but large companies that save hundreds of man hours that would've gone into creating and maintaining the projects they use.
But the platform the other tools that the GP is talking about would probably run on an OS, of which I don't think there are many which are written and maintained by small independent teams of a few developers.
Still, I was just pointing out that there are still areas that the major player is an independent developer without any backing. I'd bet that with the ease of publishing in something like NPM it's easier than ever for someone to make a good piece of software and become a dominating force in a niche area than ever before.
