I don't think it works as well for end user software. It works great for infrastructure software and libraries, because businesses contribute labor and benefit

I don't think it works as well for end user software. It works great for infrastructure software and libraries, because businesses contribute labor and benefit in turn from labor contributed from other businesses. But with end user software all the work is for a consumer who can't contribute much to the developers of the software. Of course there are such projects that receive enough in donations from end users to be sustained but not very many; and in the particular case of Linux desktop environments or distributions there is a lot of competition for users and donations of this type. The successful ones I can think of off the top of my head, such as Libre Office and Lichess are "killer applications" with no serious competition in FOSS.