Fair point, but if you strip any money from product development, this implies you don't have a budget for further development and maintenance, except if you mak

Fair point, but if you strip any money from product development, this implies you don't have a budget for further development and maintenance, except if you make it support-intensive. And for what gain? That very few cloud providers make more money and enslave customers into their walled garden? Cloud providers don't even need to provide QoS or support - they can just shrug and say "we're running an OS project as-is". If no money can come your way, then development and support is simply not sustainable. The projects you mention: Linux+git development has good financial standing from companies who could be seen as going (or having gone) aggressively against commercial Unix from a business PoV. gcc thrived on freedom enthusiasm but has seen many, many patches from commercial vendors wanting their OS, CPU or whatever supported.