[necovek]

Developing FOSS is not the only thing people care about: this discussion, in particular, is about working on standards.

You seem to be debating some other claim (about how FOSS can be maintained well) than people wanting to do things they care about when they are "settled". What I meant there is that they don't have to do their day jobs, which most of those millions you mention have to.

I have my own thoughts on FOSS (most of it is "finished" in that it served a purpose and there is no need for maintenance, even if it's imperfect and buggy), but we are not at a state where there are large groups of people who have the means not to care about regular income at all to know what they'd do.

FWIW, in the worst of times, it was the aristrocacy that pushed science and arts forward, because they were the only ones who had the means to do it: it wasn't as fast paced as today, bit it didn't stop either. We've since "democraticised" science and arts (gamifying it a bit) by also making jobs out of it and increasing access to education.

Sure, we don't need everyone to care about everything, but there will always be a critical mass of people caring about critical stuff.