[johnnyanmac]

If success is financial then no. But you could build a reputation from some brilliant and easy to use/integrate tech. Which is in the hacker's spirit and the backbone of so many "successful" software.

It also set forth a very straightforward "success" path: make good software that the community praises and tech companies (who probably also use your code) will climb over each other to get you on their team. But I suppose those days are slowly ending as well now that many problems (for all but the biggest tech companies) are being solved. No need for a million dollar mastermind when a 100k mid-level can do the job.