[grepfru_it]

They pay you $500k/yr and up. Your open source project pays $50 on a good month. You have a house to maintain and family to feed. Why would you turn down such an offer?

One thing I will caution those who do take the offer, the company will use you until you are no longer necessary and then throw you out (extinguish)

[GranPC]

Got a source for that $500k/year salary?

It might also be worth mentioning that Poettering was an employee at Red Hat, working on these open source projects, so I'd assume he was being paid more than 50 dollars a month for his work.

[grepfru_it]

Source: My paycheck

And I have actively watched OSS devs get shown the door when their work no longer matched the company's mission.

[aoetalks]

levels.fyi, for one. Someone as notable as him would be L66+ easily, I feel.

Maybe not 500k, but is 400k that far off?

[noobermin]

I know the GP is talking about generally but Poeterring was working at Redhat, he wasn't a lone open source developer fighting in the wilderness.

[hcrean]

If you are in FOSS for the money, you are not in FOSS.

Humanity could be sat around eating fruit and making art, instead we have mortgages and credit scores, because the venal systems corrupt and extortionate the progressive ones.

[caramelcustard]

We have mortgages and credit scores because the aformentioned humanity more often than not lacks the responsibility to assess both the financial capabilities of those who borrow the money and the evaluation capabilities of those who lend.

[hcrean]

This is a late stage cause. There are also many early stage causes.

[caramelcustard]

"Shepherds, Merchants, and Credit: Some Observations on Lending Practices in Ur III Mesopotamia" https://www.jstor.org/stable/25165020

Late stage, huh?

[crygin]

How long do you think that humans have existed?

[caramelcustard]

Depends on what humans we're talking about. 200k years, if we talk Homo Sapiens.