Free software existed long before mass investment by VCs. The business arguments for open source existed long before the low-interest-rate period.

We are probably not going to see mass investment by VCs in free software for awhile (perhaps never, but that is pretty strong), but developers will keep scratching our itch.

And maybe more and more developers and users will realise that AGPL/GPL/LGP are the only licenses which truly protect one’s software.

> because they didn't had to pay anything, while the tool maker's salaries were being burned by VC money

I think you somehow missed the point where Redis the project existed and was extremely popular before it was owned by what is now Redis the company.

The competition for redis in the early days wasn't paid alternatives, it was other open source alternatives; Redis just provided a more featured solution.

We need to normalize the idea that if a company uses something open source they automatically get someone to contribute to the project. That couple be hiring people in house to maintain it, it could be paying a consultant, it could be donating to a charity that maintains it. Probably some other way as well. However if you are a company getting value from open source you really need to put some money into keeping it maintained.

The above applies to private people as well. You use how many different pieces of software, what are you doing to ensure they stay maintained. (if you are like most nothing...)