> yet the authors get little return from it.

This is a big assumption. How many open source developers do so for altruistic reasons? How many open source developers are funded by companies looking for good will.

There’s a simplistic view that developers only want money and that if they don’t get rich, that’s bad. That may be true for some, but those people would need to be stupid to desire wealth from software and still make lots of contributions to open source projects.

There are many benefits other than just payment.

I’ll also add that open source is really diverse and there are many companies profitable and happy chugging along or getting bought out (red hat, canonical, jetbrains, etc etc).

If people want to get wealthy fro software there are many companies doing so. Either through selling licenses (Microsoft) or just making secret sauce that doesn’t get sold (google, Amazon, Wall Street).

I would agree with you if there was no path to riches or there was some weird open source draft that forces people to code without pay.

But as it is now, developers can choose, and do, to donate their time and brainpower writing free/libre software.