I wonder whether that has its downsides though - with Google, Apple etc. being involved in development I wonder whether that hollows out the core of participating developers and functionally makes the project dependent on paid employees.
My vision is completely the opposite, the more money we pump into open source the better. We have to get out of this idea that open source is only good (and pure) when it's some dev slaving away after hours.
I don't think s/he meant that open source developers shouldn't make money. Just that sometime projects can be hijacked by those who pay the money. One genuine concern I can think of is if BigTech slowly pivots and slowly convert such projects into web applications that they can then rent as a service. Sure, one could fork it. But without the core developers to provide insights into the codebase, it would be a tough job.
That is why AGPL license is very important for some of us.
+1 on this (and maybe also forced-anonymous donations?). I'd like to think in the 21st century we have solutions to the "whoever holds the purse strings" paradigm. And maybe corporate strategy will begin to recognize the benefits in following them. Open tools for everyone means open (cheap) tools for businesses after all
Ton Roosendaal also knows what he is doing. As he explained at the 2019 Blender conference keynote, the message to corporations is not "how can Blender help you" but "join us in Blender's mission". [1]