I have to disagree. There is a fundemental difference in how software gets designed when there is a profit motive. I don't have anything against profit, I'd like some myself, but there are stages in development where it cannot be a motive if you want the architecture to be correct.

I am a bad developer. I have been working on freedom tech for about 7 years and have little to show for it. I blame raising kids, but if I needed the money maybe I would have got something done.

I keep hoping that various projects will be the answer that I want for myself so I don't have to be the one to code it. Every year or so I'd hear of a new promising project. I'd get excited that someone else recognized the problem and was doing something about it, but then I'd dive into the details and discover that, once again, profit motive drove them to make protocol level decisions that allowed them to remain special.

It doesn't matter what that is. Maybe your company does nothing other than verify usernames. Maybe it started the block chain that will be used. Maybe it hosts the TURN servers that are hard coded into the client. It doesn't matter, if the design makes you special it also makes you responsible and you will end up with both the power and the requirement to censor.

It is possible that a developer could be far sighted enough to build an ecosystem in which they are not special in order to create an environment where they can thrive selling value-add services. For instance nostr could have been designed by someone who wanted to sell student-record Management software to schools. It would have been harder to do it right but it could be done.

All that to say, yes profit can be a useful feedback mechanism for positive development, but it also eventually drives companies to make anti-competetive decisions that create lock-in and stagnate development. Look no further than Adobe.