I get where you're coming from. There are many Linux video editors already, and many of them could use slight improvements. If people contributes to those instead of going off and making their own project from scratch, it would benefit everyone. That's true.
But I think that it's impractical in reality. For various reasons, such as politics, differences in vision, BDFLs, death by committee, etc., many open-source projects find themselves reaching a plateau and stagnating. At that point, it becomes easier to just make your own competing project with the features you want, than try to fight to get your features added upstream.
I think that this, counter-intuitively, leads to the stagnant project improving, as the "competition" with new features helps un-deadlock whatever bureaucracy was preventing improvements.
But I think that it's impractical in reality. For various reasons, such as politics, differences in vision, BDFLs, death by committee, etc., many open-source projects find themselves reaching a plateau and stagnating. At that point, it becomes easier to just make your own competing project with the features you want, than try to fight to get your features added upstream.
I think that this, counter-intuitively, leads to the stagnant project improving, as the "competition" with new features helps un-deadlock whatever bureaucracy was preventing improvements.