I hope that with Lightning and Nostr (or maybe in some other way I can't foresee yet) people will be able to pay bounties to developers to improve open source software. Also, this should ensure that developers work on what people actually want. Nowadays, a big deal of the FOSS funding comes from corporations and "foundations", and I believe there is not alignment between what users want and what the funders want.

On the other hand, corporate actors have so much power because they are close to the money faucet. They get to define the mainstream culture and what is considered "cool" by the mainstream. This is not because they are creating awesome products, but because they can spend tons of money in marketing (behavioral economics). I think this is why we are seeing mediocrity not just in software, but in so many areas.

I know it sounds cliché, but bitcoin will fix this in time.