| FOSS has always been a give and take. You use FOSS every day in your daily life from software on your phone, your computer, maybe even your microwave is using FOSS! No one has to do FOSS! It's a give and take, you take, so there's no harm in wanting to contribute back. It's about freedom, passion, getting your work out there for the benefit of humanity. Can you be sponsored / paid? Sure! Are you obligated to work for anyone or do what they want? No! It's is just impossible for big companies to pay every FOSS developer everywhere. When I install create-react-app, it downloads thousands upon thousands of libraries, from thousands of developers. Do each of them get a fraction of a cent from the profits of my company? No. Does a developer at a job cloning a repo mean they have a moral obligation to pay the developer? No. Right now, the top companies do primarily mobile / web development, and use code probably written by thousands if not millions of developers. Splitting payment to all of them is impossible. The big projects like Blender, Krita, GNU projects... are all sponsored, and receive donations. The devs work on them for the passion, recognition, and "fun". FOSS has always been a give and take. If money is a driving force for you, getting a traditional developer job (as they're very in demand) is the best choice for that goal. |