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Comment by chaostheory | Hacker News Reader

Yehuda Katz isn't just some average 'someone' we don't know. He has a proven track record. He's a core member of the ROR team and he was lead on Merb.

http://www.crunchbase.com/person/yehuda-katz

It's like saying, "Yeah Slash or Eddie Van Halen needs 40k to record a few tracks, but this kid from across the street will do it for free."

To add to that, most open source contributors live in large metros that aren't cheap (in the West and East Asia). $25k does not even come close to covering a year in those areas.

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With all due respect we're not talking about kids across the street here. We're all professional developers trying to contribute something. I'm perfectly fine with people making money especially those who have contributed so much, but is it possible to continue to contribute like we always did without looking like some kid across the street?

> With all due respect we're not talking about kids across the street here.

That was the only analogy I could think of when comparing guitarists. I didn't mean to equate both you and myself to famous programmers as children, but that's the best I could do in 5 min. My point was just to show that Yehuda isn't some average unknown panhandling for money. He's well known and he's already given a lot to the community and not to just Ruby.

I don't have a problem with anyone making money if one can. Good for him I say (the opposite was not my intention in the original comment), he found a way to make some money while doing open source software.

I don't think you understand. This isn't "a way to make some money while doing open source software"; if anything, he's probably losing money on this.

The man is taking time off his job to do something he loves for a community which he's put a lot of time into, and that's something anyone should respect.

I can certainly respect that. But I can also respect (and maybe more) someone who does the same thing in his spare time, but for free.

In case you haven't already noticed, Yehuda has done plenty of that already.

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