Perhaps a good open source analogy might be libcurl. And just take the many ruby bindings. Since about 2007 or so I’ve maintained a libcurl ruby binding. Other than perhaps using it in some of my own commercial works - that project has netted me $0 and yet has plenty of alternative open source libraries that compete with it for the mind share of the ruby community.... I want great open source projects to prosper so that we can use them to build cool things solve real problems and make real money