If you dig deeply you’ll see that a large fraction of that is actually employees at big companies, universities, and governments. In other words it’s subsidized. Any on the clock OSS work is a subsidy. It’s not pure volunteer.
This tends to be done when there is a strong common interest, but it’s almost always for deep tech and dev tooling stuff. I have never seen an open source consumer product subsidized in this way because consumer lock in is where the money is.
You will never see an open Uber, Ring, or Alexa unless a way can be found to charge for it. As it stands free means “as in beer” more than freedom and nobody would pay for such a thing.
I have played with stuff like Home Assistant. It’s not bad if you are technical. A non-techie could never deploy it.
This tends to be done when there is a strong common interest, but it’s almost always for deep tech and dev tooling stuff. I have never seen an open source consumer product subsidized in this way because consumer lock in is where the money is.
You will never see an open Uber, Ring, or Alexa unless a way can be found to charge for it. As it stands free means “as in beer” more than freedom and nobody would pay for such a thing.
I have played with stuff like Home Assistant. It’s not bad if you are technical. A non-techie could never deploy it.