My only regret is that I have but one upvote to give.  You really nailed that on the head.<p>As a computer programmer and an open source software enthusiast, believe me when I say that I would <i>love</i> to contribute every line of code I write to open source.   Not because of any moral imperative, but simply because I&#x27;d love for my work to be widely distributed and used.  Unfortunately, it&#x27;s incredibly difficult for a company of one to pull that off (but not impossible -- see Mike Pall, for example, though I have no idea how much money he actually makes (made?) via LuaJIT).  If I could work on nothing but <i>my</i> open source software without needing to sacrifice my (already rather modest, really) quality of life, I would tender my letter of resignation in the morning.  People don&#x27;t even want to pay for software when it&#x27;s <i>not</i> available for free:  I have a very hard time imagining that they&#x27;d be willing to pay for software that <i>is</i> free.<p>I just don&#x27;t see any way I can make it work, at least not right now.  Maybe once I&#x27;ve got more of a financial safety net set up, I&#x27;ll give it a shot or two, but for now I&#x27;m content to develop proprietary software for The Man™ in exchange for a monetary salary.  I do try to squeeze in bits of open source development wherever&#x2F;whenever I can, and that&#x27;ll have to be good enough.