[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.