[coldtea]

Because companies are cheapskates nowadays.

Back in the Linux bubble days (1997-early 2000s), lots of companies employed full time people to work on all kinds of stuff, not just profitable company project, but also needed infrastructure. Even front end projects, like Nautilus and Evolution were created by full paid teams.

[davidw]

I posted the 'public good' link elsewhere, and this goes to the very heart of the problem: why should I pay if someone else might, and then I get it for free?

There might be a bunch of companies willing to chip in a bit, but coordinating that is difficult. Something like kickstarter might be able to help, but that has its own problems: if you spend your time writing a commercial SSL thing, you can go out and sell it right now when it's ready. If some company has to wait around for the results.... it's not as nice for them.