Were these open-source projects result of academic research or someone's dissertation? If so, then yes, many niche packages, for e.g. from CERN are open source even though no one has the ability to go and build their own particle accelerator.

Another exception is public works paid by taxes such as Government open source projects.

And yet, in commercial industry where I've worked - it is hard to find anything that's useful and can replace internal software because there are no free alternatives. I don't expect these things to be out and open!