Which path you go down depends on a lot of factors of that particular piece of software.

Can I trust FreeCORE to be a stable, secure project that hangs on to my NAS data if it’s an unfunded fork? Or would it be better to give up some openness for something like TrueNAS SCALE?

When it comes to stuff like Proxmox and TrueNAS I think a lot of what keeps those good products for homelab use is the fact that they have commercial customers paying for the development. I can count on TrueNAS being around and getting updates because they have a proven revenue stream.

That said, it’s a balance, because sometimes that commercialization becomes a rug pull. A lot of the viability of those projects for homelab use revolves around the companies that put those products out recognizing that they have a customer base that will not pay and accepting that fact without deciding to try to squeeze out every last person who just might pay by compromising the free edition.

I like the way Proxmox and OpnSense handle this: you get the community patch channels which are “not for production use” which scares the corporate businesses into paying but has zero negative impact for home users.

To be clear I’m also not saying FreeCORE specifically is a fly-by-night project or unstable or anything. I’m genuinely unfamiliar with it. I’m just saying, sometimes projects like that end up not being the right choice for certain use cases.

But he's very pro-ai, though, and is vibe closing other projects like https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linus-Torvalds-Vide-Coding