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A few RPG creators might make bank, but for the most part, we don't. For the most part, people don't even want to make it their entire career - they have a particular vision of a game they want to make. I think if indie designers want to see their ideas succeed, they should release them and start working with others, because nobody's good at everything you need to do to create an RPG.
Creating a passable RPG requires typography, art, rules, a setting, indexing, editing, good technical prose and reasonable non-technical prose. A lot of people have a fantastic idea for a setting, or want to design a tight set of rules, but nobody can do everything.
All good quality RPGs come from corporations, because only corporations have got enough people with the right skills working together, at least so far. If indie creators can join up in the right way, they can achieve books every bit as good.
Of course indie game designers already work together - this doesn't require opening up the source files - but the pool is limited to those they speak with. How often do we reach out to work with someone on a project? The conversation doesn't look promising - it's not clear where to start, or even if someone wants to work together. And game designers creating a game in the classic manner could get precious about their source-files.
Open source software repeatedly outperforms the hidden code produced by massive corporations, and the reason lies in the workflows open source engineers can achieve. The gates are open, and we can wander right into the area that any software is produced.
When project are in their infancy, coders may take a look because they like the idea. When projects are working, coders will fix bugs or (occasionally) add features. There's no reason to imagine game designers could not approach problems in the same way. If a new project sounds like it has a great core concept, you could download a copy, add some spells, a race, or maybe suggest different rules, and then send a request to have your changes merged in. If you like an existing project but find problems - bad formatting, spelling mistakes, a poorly-written chapter introduction - you could rewrite and send in those suggestions.
And best of all, projects can develop with constant audience feedback. Instead of a finished product followed by various complaints across messaging boards, the project can continuously and instantly respond to feedback. Most open-source projects come with a board to discuss issues.
Of course, all of this presupposes some kind of text-based workflow. People passing Adobe-documents back and forth is just a nightmare, and demands the same kinds of strict divisions that corporations require in terms of departments, and time.
But a text-based workflow shouldn't challenge anyone - we can all write in plain Markdown.
Of course once a project gets going, it's time to move beyond markdown and put in some proper formatting. In theory, anything will do, but of course the classic open-source software is classic for a reason - nobody needs to buy a licence for LaTeX.
Open-source workflows won't solve a single problem with art. Besides some outside chance that a very popular RPG could receive some donated art, art will continue to cost a lot, as the skill is so specialised. An amateur typesetter can perform okay-ish with the right tools, but art will always require hours.
But the rest is up for grabs, for free, with great tools available.
After looking about, I've found a few RPGs and RPG material written in an open fashion, including Into the Dungeon: Revived, and Cairn. A few hours searching brought up a couple more. Most are pamphlet-sized rules, or unfinished projects. The formatting is simple, and almost all lack any artwork. More developed projects will have a core book, but no supplementary material - no adventures or campaigns.
(note that OGL games are not open source)
There's also a particularly beautiful LaTeX Template available.
All in all, projects are scarce, and the field remains full of potential.
It's nice to work with others. 'Many hands', and all that. Editing one's own work seems about as bad as being one's own lawyer.
But the ultimate prize up for grabs is the audience. If enough people play the game, and the 'issues board' is open and friendly, people will start posting ideas, problems, spelling mistakes, and suggestions. Playtesting a campaign book could take a few months for a single play-through; but a community of only a few dozen groups could whip through several campaigns in the same time, each one adding ideas, notes, and pointing out where the explanations don't actually explain anything.
Best of all - no more house rules. Every time someone wants to add or remove a rule, they can simply do so in their own copy and receive a clean, fresh, pdf to print out and hand out to their own players.