The Future of Open Source: Is It Sustainable?
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Sure it is sustainable, at least as long as I can work on it. I've been at it 20 years so far. I still work on it as a research project.
I was also the maintainer of Magnus, an open source Infinite Group Theory system. That project died when I left the job. The new person who took over stopped working on it. So that project wasn't sustainable.
So, to your question "Is Open Source Sustainable?"... that depends on the maintainer.
What YOU mean by "sustainable" might be different from what I mean, however.
Are you asking if maintainers / projects can get funding? The answer is no (modulo a few exceptions). I've tried DARPA. I've tried direct company requests. I've tried a contribution fund. I've tried direct requests to funding organizations of various sorts. I've tried the Google Summer of Code (got a yes on day 1, got dropped on day 2).
One of the issues is that funding, such as grants, require "fiducial management". That is, somebody has to handle funds and collect receipts. I asked a large company to set up a very small organization that had some accountants who would manage the grants for open source projects, including mine. That also failed.
Suggestion: Set up an open source account management firm with fiducial accountants. Ask large companies that use open source to give grants to the firm to support the projects they use. Make the funding public, including who contributed and who got funds.
Are there costs involved in running Axiom? Sure. I maintain my own servers (paid for by me). I pay for the network connection monthly. I have (in the past) gone to conferences. I have prepared and given talks at conferences worldwide. I have Axiom t-shirts, cups, glasses, a hoodie, and stickers. I have created and distributed CDs. I have self-published a book. I have done "remote help" for several people for free. On average Axiom has costs me about $3000 / year, not counting my time. So, doing the math, it has cost me $60,000 over 20 years.
Open source (and Free Software) is NOT free-as-in-money.