It's possible for open-source authors to get rich (Linus Torvalds made several million from VA Linux's IPO), but much like academics, the financial returns are usually an order of magnitude or so less than comparable levels of success in the business world. It makes sense that someone trying to get paid for their labor would make more money than someone who gives their labor away for free.
The interesting thing to me are the projects that try and make money after becoming popular. And they're popular because they started as oss.
Think Jenkins. It took off because it was foss. Now the creators are trying to create a way to make money off of it by selling Jenkins-aaS.
They gave away their labor, got popular because they gave it away. Now they're building a business around the free parts. If they had never given it away to begin with, would there have ever been a CloudBees?
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It's possible for open-source authors to get rich (Linus Torvalds made several million from VA Linux's IPO), but much like academics, the financial returns are usually an order of magnitude or so less than comparable levels of success in the business world. It makes sense that someone trying to get paid for their labor would make more money than someone who gives their labor away for free.
The interesting thing to me are the projects that try and make money after becoming popular. And they're popular because they started as oss.
Think Jenkins. It took off because it was foss. Now the creators are trying to create a way to make money off of it by selling Jenkins-aaS.
They gave away their labor, got popular because they gave it away. Now they're building a business around the free parts. If they had never given it away to begin with, would there have ever been a CloudBees?