I wonder if it would be possible for developers / other stake holders to launch an investment fund who's sole purpose is buy shares in Apple / Microsoft / etc with the view to influence internal policy.
And those shares would lose money specifically because of what they want to accomplish. Your “fund” would lose more from the stock loss than the gain from attempting to influence policy.
And you’d need a $100 billion fund to even get noticed. Even Warren Buffet isn’t calling the shots at Apple.
Given Apple’s current market-cap - over 1TN USD - you’ll need a lot of investors.
You’d have much better success by spending a fraction of the money to hire goons to kidnap Apple’s executives driving home from work and “convince” them to change corporate policy that way.
Activist investor style.