Why? Maybe he was paid by the linux foundation during that time? Other sources of income? The gratuit "of course" is not clear to me.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you try to say, but: " rails.app ought to make Rails more popular [...] wider deployment of Rails enriches Ruby developers". Are you saying that Yehuda should not make money from his efforts, but the Ruby developers in turn can use the results naturally for their gain?
And Rails is sponsored by 37Signals. You'd be hard pressed to find very many large open source projects without commercial backing.
Are you saying that Yehuda should not make money from his efforts, but the Ruby developers in turn can use the results naturally for their gain?
That is generally how things work. Companies specializing in open source technologies have a business interest in their specialty software(s) becoming more popular. A core Rails developer will command the highest speaking and consulting fees.
I think the reservation many people have about all of this is that it feels backwards. Asking for sponsors is one thing, but making the open source project pay-to-play flies in the face of the spirit of FLOSS.
Ah, maybe I just do not agree with that spirit. The SBCL compiler fared well with Nikodemus Siivola's crowdfunding: http://random-state.net/log/3523852985.html
At the same time I do not get how this is a problem for people to accept wrt software, while it is the common suggestion to artists in copyright questions on HN: go crowdfunding!
In any event, it is better than Katz should work directly for people who are going to use his software than that he work for some giant company that incidentally finds it valuable to task him with something useful.