Hacker News Reader

The main developers of those projects you have listed have all made a living thanks to them.

But those are the rockstars of the FOSS world, the equivalent of Taylor Swift or whatever. I doubt she or artists like her would be complaining about how she doesn't make enough money from music.

The typical way to make a living from open source is to use your work as a portfolio to get a job doing closed-source development. Then if you keep working on your open source stuff it’s either for fun or to keep your portfolio up to date for when you want to switch jobs.

I don’t think there’s a musical equivalent to that strategy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com