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A good case study is OpenSSL project which was developed initially by one guy (EAY) then taken over by others and, having a very permissive license, was immediately commercialised by some companies, and used by literally everyone on the Internet, while the developers were funded in a typical trickle-down model like "oh we earned $1m on your code, but our shareholders won't approve $1k for you if you publish your code for free, but hey, here's $100 donation!"