Some product decides not to use it. Someone loses a contract supporting it. Someone doesn't get a job because their work isn't favored anymore.

I think you're trying to invoke a frame where because dnsmasq is "open source" that it isn't subject to market forces or doesn't define value in a market-sensitive way. And... it is, and it does.

Free software hippies may be communists at heart but they still need to win on a capitalist battlefield.