You took Linux as an example? It took Linux 10 years (1992-2002 - kernel 2.4) to get to a stage where it's considered widely production-ready in the enterprise. And the phenomenal development rate of the 2.4+ series is thanks to corporate sponsors hiring talented developers to work on the kernel full time.
I can give you a couple of counter-counter-examples.
GIMP has been around for almost 20 years by now, but its development rate is abysmally slow, still faraway from what most people expect from a Photoshop replacement. Its progress since ~2008 hasn't been that big.
GNOME has been around for almost that long too, but it's constantly suffering from lack of man power.
The Sidekiq background worker system for Ruby is open source, but development went much faster ever since the author started monetizing on it by selling commercial licenses.
Nginx is also open source. They have much more development power now that they are a business and have a source of income. Before, it was just Igor working on it whenever he had time when he's off work.
I can give you a couple of counter-counter-examples.
GIMP has been around for almost 20 years by now, but its development rate is abysmally slow, still faraway from what most people expect from a Photoshop replacement. Its progress since ~2008 hasn't been that big.
GNOME has been around for almost that long too, but it's constantly suffering from lack of man power.
The Sidekiq background worker system for Ruby is open source, but development went much faster ever since the author started monetizing on it by selling commercial licenses.
Nginx is also open source. They have much more development power now that they are a business and have a source of income. Before, it was just Igor working on it whenever he had time when he's off work.