[jiggy2011]

Yes, almost all significant software is produced by full time programmers. This includes open source which is why some companies will pay programmers full time to hack on projects.

There may be a few people who have the energy to work a 40-60 hour week in a serious job and then come home and put the same level of love into an open source project but these people are a minority.

If I thought I could just quit my job tomorrow and spend my time hacking on some game or open source project without having to find someone to fund me up front (who would subsequently want some plan on how I would return their investment) I would do it in a flash.

[gaius]

RMS "solved" this problem by getting a $1M grant from the MacArthur Foundation, and another $1M from the Takeda Foundation.

[ctdonath]

Fliers do not diminish the point. RMS worked very hard to earn that $1M, and foundations are in the business of finding fliers worth giving bags of money to. Such "here's a million bucks, go do something interesting" people are rare.

Obvious point is 99.9999% of content creators cannot afford to create for free, and cannot attract gratuitous "free money" sufficient to cover basic food/shelter needs (dependents included). Observing that 0.0001% can serves to irritate, not facilitate, the discussion.

[gaius]

Yes that is exactly my point - there must be a means for content/IP creators to be paid. The OPs point that content creation is cheap or free is absolutely not true, and is unrelated to the cost of distribution.