Maybe I should log into his npub to see his feeds but I just don't get this sense of captured. I think the number of developers and total commits has to outnumber those funded by OpenSats.

To further that point, I don't think as many get that opportunity with Bitcoin. You can refuse an update to Bitcoin Core, but there are so few forks to choose from (at least on the surface) as a node runner there isn't much you can do if you want security patches and so on. Of course unless your a developer and maintain a fork yourself.