Nokia and the rest of the Symbian ecosystem actually led the market by a long stretch, just a short while ago. If they hadn't hired a former Microsoft exec to lead the company, and perhaps with a bit of luck, Nokia/Siemens/etc would have been that alternative. But that is another discussion.
We can agree to disagree on what is meaningful. Especially F-Droid is already widely used, and I would certainly not call it a toy.
You shouldn't rule out the snowball effect of FOSS. The nice thing about this kind of open program is that someone like you that has a beef and a clue can actually propose something, and get a grant to get the party started. After that, communities can kick in.
That is very true. Budget is something that most organisations are fairly bad at. So it does make a lot of sense for e.g. the European Commission to work with organisations like NLnet that do get it.
There are actually quite some projects named in the article that are moving in on Adobe turf:
- Typst (a new typesetting tool, previously covered here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41014941)
- PagedJS, a browser polyfill for CSS paged media
- and something called "Pushing forward for CSS Print" which is also about creating professional print media with HTML + CSS
And to top it off, there is a project for digital signatures (Signature PDF) to compete with Adobe Sign...
So I would say the score isn't too bad on that dimension.
Using standards typically makes a big difference. And having redundancy, so that lack of interoperability/lock in is actually not something you find out after it is too late.
Actually, the grant process at NLnet is supposed super light weight. It consists of a single short form (https://nlnet.nl/propose) with very little boilerplate. No consultants needed...