I think free (spyvertising supported) and free or steeply discounted (operating at a VC-backed loss) commercial offerings both being so common dampens enthusias

I think free (spyvertising supported) and free or steeply discounted (operating at a VC-backed loss) commercial offerings both being so common dampens enthusiasm to work on and demand for open source software, especially the user-facing stuff. Earlier on in computing history (into the mid '00s, at least) such things were much less common. I think it also dampens the same for traditional paid software in a lot of areas, incidentally.