For those interested in sustaining themselves by making open / libre software, I plan on dedicating my next summer to starting a cooperative for hackers. The basic idea is that if we can create a decentralized ecosystem for exchanging currency, ideas, and goods in an open and cooperative manner, we can solve our needs as hackers without resorting to non-free alternatives. You can find my early planning here:
https://github.com/SirDinosaur/hackercoop, and I'd
greatly appreciate any questions, comments, critiques on how to make my / our dream possible.