I'm often less excited about a solo dev doing "freeway out of the kindness of his heart" and more interested in seeing OSS software gather around a foundation scheme with some corporate sponsors, Blender-style

I don't know much about Blender but if OSS still needs corporate sponsors to stay competitive:

What's the point? Might as well become a for profit company themselves then.
Why would any for profit company sponsor FOSS? They will literally not make profit on it.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 13 points 1 day ago

Oh, this I like, because I assumed some of this was universally known, but maybe you have to be a bit of a specifically focused nerd.

So for question 1... well, what's the point of doing the work as an individual? The software that comes out of the other end is still free and open source, so people can still get it freely and modify it however they want. And if you have a successful org you may be able to actually pay and hire devs and grow as a company does without requiring constant growth or prioritizing a sellout.

To question number 2... because having standards is good and you still get a bunch of benefits from free alternatives existing. You'd have to ask the specific corporate sponsors, but it's pretty clear why Epic would benefit from a free 3D modelling suite people can use to make Unreal Engine content without them having to build and maintain it. Likewise for Nvidia, which will happily sell you the render processing power for your 3D movie project without having to also give you the tools (or share your budget with a paid software alternative). Other sponsors benefit by selling stuff for use with Blender. 3D scanners, plugins, assets... lots of side markets where people can benefit from everbody having access to the toolset. People who sell tutorials. People who make games and have some budget they'd rather spend here than licensing a hundred seats of paid software...

There are tons of tangible benefits from having a powerful, effective open tool for key tasks that aren't taken advantage of because commerical competitiveness prevents mutual benefit in a bunch of situations. Do you think every artist that is stuck hating Adobe but having to use Photoshop wouldn't prefer having a free, open alternative to the same quality level? And they'd all be more than capable of financing one with a fraction of the cost of PS, I'm sure. It's just hard to coordinate and justify that level of support when your benefits aren't hard revenue pouring in. There are more examples, too. Smart home hardware sellers really DO like Home Assistant providing an inexpensive option for people to plug their devices to without having to pay Google and Apple for the privilege or having to develop an alternative in-house.

The best thing that could happen to open software would be for that pipeline from an obnoxiously overmonized task with no alternatives to a self-sufficient, non-profit-driven open alternative to get refined and standardized. I have very little belief in one-off devs working for nothing and a lot of hope for organizations capable of paying people for their work without having to endlessly prioritize revenue and growth.