&gt; and it feels a tad bit smug and elitist<p>Saying that about someone who wants to help out so essentially volunteers their time to help a government project, which in essence means it helps everyone, seems a bit entitled and ill-informed.<p>I&#x27;m sure many people want to get paid to work on open source, but it&#x27;s a free market, and people will bid what they think a project is worth, and worth isn&#x27;t always about monetary compensation.<p>Complaining about this is essentially the same as complaining about soup-kitchen volunteers.  Surely there are plenty of people that would love to be paid for that job, but we have all these smug elitist volunteers doing the jobs for free.<p>&gt; If you want to contribute to open source, then please feel free to join an open source project.<p>The people that start&#x2F;work on a specific open source project have the right to <i>ask</i> for compensation in whatever way they like, or <i>enforce</i> it through their license.  You have no right to speak for all open source projects.