I guess it would depend on whether or not the project spawns a dedicated community that lasts for a long time. Without a wide pool of knowledgeable contributors, I think it would be hard for an original team to both support the one design while also developing the next iteration.
Not to bring it up as a whipping boy, but let’s take the case of Wayland, which is “just” a software protocol. It was started back in 2008, and is still under active development. As more projects support it, more edge cases are coming up, which is why new features are added to the protocol all the time. In those 15 years, they’ve had to adjust to technologies that didn’t exist back in 2008, like widespread adoption of 4k HDR displays, or Vulkan. Now imagine that, but with every aspect of a computer. In 2008, DDR3 RAM was just a year old. Today we’re on DDR5 and you (probably) can’t buy a new machine that takes DDR3. PCIE 2 was the latest shit in 2007. Now I see that PCIE 7 is planned for next year.
A global corporation can support old products while also developing new technologies because they have unfathomable labor and capital at their beck and call.
I think that free software can keep up with proprietary offerings because the barrier to entry is relatively low. You just need free time and a source control client. I think it would be different if your project toolchain involved literal tools that cost millions of dollars.