[palmotea]

> It’s always been very weird that little hobbyist open source projects produce much better software than billions dollar companies.

Kinda sorta. Little hobbyist projects can do better on relatively small and focused stuff, where the passion of a couple part-time people can cut through the crap that would be created by a thousand half-ass mythical man-month producers.

However, for a lot of stuff, only a "billion dollar company" (or other organization) can do it. Stuff with a lot of unavoidable but unrewarding scut work (e.g. web scraper maintenance) or stuff that requires more focus and effort than a couple of passionate part-time people can provide.