• sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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    4 days ago

    Exactly. For example:

    • LibreOffice - Collabora offers paid support for larger companies and does a ton of development on the core
    • WINE - CodeWeavers has their own proprietary version (CrossOver) that they sell as a commercial product; oh, and Valve helps a ton too
    • GNOME - RedHat/IBM funds it and most things in its ecosystem for its commercial customers

    And so on. Most big FOSS projects are backed by one or more companies with full-time developers supporting it. The difference is that the license makes lock-in a lot less likely, since the community (read: non-paid devs) will likely patch in compatibility (i.e. file support, data export, etc).