> instantly more trustworthy

quite ironic, radicle seems to have raised 7m$ from "radworks", some sort of crypto foundation.

that being said, why is it being not monetizable a good thing? their website says radicle has been in development for 4 years already. without more money in the bank, how would they continue to build the thing?

Radicle is a free software project, not a company or commercial product. Many other open source projects are also not monetizable in the narrow sense, and still manage to attract enough contributors and funding to flourish. Sometimes these projects even get adopted so widespread that multiple companies build consortia/foundations to fund the development, even if there is no direct revenue stream from that.

As long as someone is willing to fund the development of Radicle, the developers just will have a stronger incentive to work on it. Without any more funding, of course it will join the (very large) club of less well funded free software projects.

If enough people join and contribute now, and then some companies make the switch, it might well be feasible to pay a small team to continue working on it, financed by donations.

Just don't think about it as a commercial product, only because someone decided to use their money towards its development. If you don't like that it's not a company, then that's okay. I am just trying to give another perspective.