When were we, as a society, so generous and selfless that we created products without a profit (or other reward) motive?
It's great to have exceptions like the wordle guy -- but the norm is perfectly fine, too.
It's great to have exceptions like the wordle guy -- but the norm is perfectly fine, too.
Vim, Emacs, Java, Python: these are huge things. As a creator or high level contributor, your resume is set. Many of the creators of these and others have specific titles at Google getting paid well. Creating such big projects also allows you to get paid tens of thousands for speaking gigs or similar things. I believe it is the jquery creator who was making $500K+ a year doing speaking gigs.
None of these are like Wordle. It isn’t a huge coding achievement that will garner the same financial benefits every thing listed gives.
I didn’t follow the log4j thing but I’d expect the creator to have been able to get lucrative consulting and contracting work beyond what would normally be possible.
Thankfully they're well established now. I can't imagine them being invented today.