This is a great video on the reality of open source software. Open source hardware also faces similar funding issues.

As long as open source is fundamentally dependent on the private sector, it will exist within at best a parasitic relationship. To truly develop an autonomous open source model requires a structural change in funding that allows it to stand alone and apart from corporate sponsorship.

This is a classic chicken-and-egg situation. We want people to sponsor us, but many of those people also work for the private sector. Governments and NGOs may sponsor us, but they also depend on private sector for tax and donation revenues.

This requires a much deeper discussion that unpacks the fundamental assumptions that underpin our economic, social and political systems. The structural challenges of funding open source exposes the constraints of our current system.

Unless we examine the fundamental assumptions by which our current civilization operates, we cannot make the structural changes that would enable open source to reach its full potential, which is maximum access to shared intellectual and material resources for the benefit of all.