That's a lot of ifs. You'd also need to have people in influential positions in the project.

Let's not sugar coat that GIMP and Blender both went to great lengths to eschew industry workflow and UI/UX norms. they both only started shifting to more familiar paradigms when grassroots movements within their user communities pushed hard for it.

Development time and money are only half the battle. Project leadership and politics are an unquantifiable effort.

Blender for example has been capable of great things for a long time. Its surge in popularity was largely down to giving up the ideologies of its unique workflow.