There is no corporate monopoly over bitcoin, and competition is good, I am not sure where you get that from, I have never said such contradictory things.
If you're in favour of competition and a free and open market, then how do you square that with the rampant protectionism going on in the community right now? Protectionism can be defined as actions or policies that restrict or restrain external competition. Core is seen as the "native" code, which some people feel has to be protected or shielded from any outside, external developers, working on their own implementations. If competition is good, you should welcome more alternative clients.
Also, if were are going to head down the route of corporate entities paying developers, many would feel more comfortable if there were a greater number of corporate entities involved. As things stand right now, how many companies are directly paying developers? I'm only aware of five main contributors: Blockstream, MIT, Chaincode Labs, Ciphrex, and BTCC. And two of those, Chaincode Labs and Ciphrex, are companies run *by* developers themselves, so I'm not even sure that counts. They're basically self-funded coders. So it's certainly not a monopoly, but it's not exactly diverse either.
Yes, competition is good, but we have to be careful.
Bitcoin is not a lab experiment with rats, it has 10 billion market cap and a whole new economy depending on it. We cannot affort to skrew it up.
So yes Core deserves some protectionism, by the big bitcoin whales themselves, so its totally legitimate.
If 90% of bitcoin owners favor Core, then that is totally legitimate, because the big money is what counts here. Bitcoin is private property, and if the majority of the money decides 1 path, that is our wish.
I tend to look at Bitcoin as a corporation , because it is essentially that, an unincorporated global corporation, where multiple wealth owners decide our common route that is best for our wealth.
So bitcoin is not a sunday chess club where you can have any form of governance you wish. We are talking about 10 billion dollars here that are jointly owned by all bitcoin owners, and the final word should always be with the majority of the money.
Nodes dont matter, miners dont matter, it's what the 50% +1 percent of the market cap wants matters!