Industrial Quality Embedded development

Work for company specialized in a specific industrial communications standard. Things go quite well at first... work on C# GUI at first then switch to embedded development in C.
Now:
Has to write shitty ANSI C89 code, because some assholes use a compiler from the 80s. Open the fucking IDE for their compiler... it looks like it's from fucking 1998. Co-worker recommends another IDE which he says is more bearable, now it looks like it's 2002. Great. This is not so bad, after all with portable TM C code written in the most supported standard we can reach a wider variety of customers except when their C compiler is actually a compiler for a C like language. Fuck me.

A Few months go by... company asks us to help them with their PSU. The estimation for the task is a few weeks. 6 months later it's still not ready. They bought their fucking PSU from the fucking chinks.

Some months later... we need a REST API with JSON and that's when we started web development in C. Friend of mine reads the REST API and JSON specs... design committee calls him the REST API expert. He spent 2 hours reading the specs. Fuck me.

Co-worker writes a UI framework for an LCD to display shit with... management decides we need a string name and a number for value displayed.

Is this the absolute state of INDUSTRIAL QUALITY development?

If only business would work for libre software, we'd be discussing native VR Linux Games on the latest hand gloves that can even detect sweat!

>>2
monetizing FLOSS is harder than you make it sound

>>3
You can give device for free, but sell batteries for like the price of full device. That usually happens with video game consoles, where each unit is cheaper than its actual price, but producers make up for it from selling actual games.

>>4
IIRC, such practice was established by Commodore founder, Jack Tramiel, who sold C64 at smaller price to get market. C64 had more RAM than competition at the time, and the RAM was very costly resource back then, the difference between 16kb and 64kb is much huger than between 16 Gb and 64Gb. Because there is a minimal amount of RAM required for some tasks, like text editing (one book's chapter takes like 60kb) or say typical video game map (128x128 bytes).

>>5
Also, such large amount of memory allowed C64 to have real frame buffer (as opposed to rigid scanline rasterization), therefore the raise of demoscene.

>>3
I meant something more innate than what OP lamented: Business is in the business of profit, not resolutions.
All his lamentations can easily be summarized to one word: profit
I personally wanted to see libre replicable verifiable hardware & firmware, but that's not profitable. I'm not ignorant of homebrew PCs, but imagine for a second Intel, Valve, Microsoft, Levono, Apollo, and Oculus would work together to build a real libre VR OS and hardware.
That's a future we didn't choose.
>>4
Ah, the good all "Built at a Loss" tactic. Works excellently in the Ink and printer industry. Too bad there isn't a libre standard.