[larrys]

"First of all, it's tempting to cash in on goodwill earned."

The way I see it what you have done is way better.

And this strategy is really what people should be doing as opposed to simply cashing in goodwill:

"Take Ruby on Rails. More than 3,000 people have committed man-decades, maybe even man-centuries, of work for free. Buying all that effort at market rates would have been hundreds of millions of dollars. Who would have been able to afford funding that?"

Work for free that has benefited many people including you. Can't put a price on that.

You created Ruby on Rails and it was like well enough that all those people "more than 3000 ... man-decades ..." have put their time into the project and you have benefited greatly because you are the person that most people associate with Rails. Not any of the 3000 contributors. And that notoriety is what pays off in droves. Even if you passed up a few dollars (debatable by your argument?) you've gotten something way more valuable.

[equalarrow]

I don't think dhh would argue that he has made a nice bank roll on Rails - no one would. But he isn't the only one that's benefited. There are quite a few of the 3000 committers that have their own consulting companies and they do quite well. Many speak at conferences, write books, etc. This is all pretty standard in the OS community and nothing new to Rails or dhh.

I think what he's taking aim at more is that he did this for free of charge and did not require any fundraising campaign to get it off the ground (or continue it). And it's the other freedom (in his case, libre) that allowed him to do whatever he wanted, on whatever whim he wanted. There was no hard deadline (except those he made) imposed because of funding constraints. And from that perspective, he's absolutely right: not beholden to anyone else's money or rules is the ultimate freedom to be as creative as you want to make whatever you want.

Because it's possible now to get a project funded on something like Kickstarter, there's less freedom when that happens because money becomes the ultimate driver. If it wasn't, then there'd be no need for it and work on the project could take any form over any timeframe.