You have some points but I think you’re overexposed to forks and drama by being in these communities. Most OSS works and steadily improves and becomes a reliable tool. Closed software often gets better but often gets worse with bloat, subscription models, etc. I think that closed software does more harm to the utility and reliability of their products than open software.

A streamer using OBS doesn’t worry about drama or forks, but they know they have to switch to Windows 11 with new hardware requirements and ads built in. A commuter using the Transit app (OSM map data) doesn’t care about where the maps came from, but they know when the app has a bug, they have nowhere to turn to get it fixed. A 3D animator sees Blender steadily improve and knows if they switch to Adobe, they’ll have to pay increasingly high subscription costs to keep using it. Any individual project is not forking all the time. You just know about it when it happens to any project, whether you use the software or not.

I have 3 of these units since last summer. Should I be cleaning them out? Pardon the ignorance. I’ve never owned a window unit before and I won’t have one after this summer.