> I understand companies needing to profit, my question is why does an open source library need a company?

Because people like to eat and have homes and not everyone wants to work full time on someone else's code and then come home and work full time on their own. Because paying people for the work that they do is a good thing.

I think this is a very capitalistic lens you're viewing through. Open source projects (and the web in general) are traditionally not paid work or often seen as "work" at all. The web was built by people who just wanted to do a cool thing, and motivation of profit was much less common.

I challenge the concept of "paying people for the work that they do is a good thing", at least in this context. I don't think everything needs to be profitable and paid, people can just make cool things for love and passion.