I suck at 3d modeling, so I evaluate tools from a “how much value can a noob get” point of view.
Honestly CAD is very complex software and is not well suited to a single engineer working in their hobby time. I think a huge reason Blender has been successful is that they built a sustainable crowd funding system. They currently pull in $166k each month with that system: https://fund.blender.org/
I am pleased to see also Godot engine (a similar type of tool) pulling in over $7k/month (last I checked) on Patreon.
Anyway there is a “business model” for open source projects even if they don’t sell anything. Call it a funding model. I think open source projects need to get a handle on that for anything that exceeds a very small team.
I am trying to build this kind of sustainable funding for my own open source farming robot (link in profile) and I think we’re going to go with Open Collective at least as a front end.
For fiscal hosting we’ve applied to the Open Collective Foundation and the Software Freedom Conservancy.
I think open source CAD really needs a funding plan like this. It’s a very large software project and we’ve seen how Blender and Godot are able to actually get traction and produce a compelling program with resources like that.