[mike-cardwell]

When was that ever not the case?

[delano]

The key word was products, i.e. making a living from building tools for other developers.

There are many more developer-run companies today than there were 10 years ago and the number will continue to grow. There have never been more opportunities to do that than right now.

[chc]

AFAIK, it's actually the opposite — only recently is this a hard thing, with the proliferation of OSS development tools.

[delano]

OSS is an opportunity. It's not about the software; it's about the services and the ecosystem. There are a lot of people making money from Wordpress plugins, themes, and development.