>>30,33
Inconsistency detected! You called GCC bloated and Visual C++ truly great! What distinguishes bloatedness from greatness?
It's absolutely true that compensating programmers will attract more time and talent. There are software companies that develop open source software though, and they make money by receiving funding from various sources, because there are people that want their software to be developed. In this environment, employees can devote a full work day. But even in other circumstances, it isn't a weakness to only work for a couple hours a day on something for an extended amount of time. It is suboptimal for turning out a project within a short time frame, but it works fine for creating a product over a long period of time, and continuously making improvements to it as it is tested by the public.