> Linux happened and nobody paid (in the beginning)
Linux happened mostly through the contributions of the paid developers of the Linux foundation. And still the majority of the commits belong to those developers. And it was possible to do so because the foundation received enough support from major donors, most of which were corporations. If you would want to choose an Open Source success story that wasnt backed by corporations, WordPress would be what you are looking for. But even then, the WordPress ecosystem found a way to fund itself directly through its users. Which means that they are also funded. In contrast, a gigantic amount of Open Source projects were abandoned when its contributors were no longer able to maintain them because life responsibilities started raining on them...
Unfortunately any social paradigm, movement or setup must be able to sustain itself economically. The best way to do it is to do it through its users, directly, so that concentrated capital wont be able to take it over.
Linux happened mostly through the contributions of the paid developers of the Linux foundation. And still the majority of the commits belong to those developers. And it was possible to do so because the foundation received enough support from major donors, most of which were corporations. If you would want to choose an Open Source success story that wasnt backed by corporations, WordPress would be what you are looking for. But even then, the WordPress ecosystem found a way to fund itself directly through its users. Which means that they are also funded. In contrast, a gigantic amount of Open Source projects were abandoned when its contributors were no longer able to maintain them because life responsibilities started raining on them...
Unfortunately any social paradigm, movement or setup must be able to sustain itself economically. The best way to do it is to do it through its users, directly, so that concentrated capital wont be able to take it over.