[MadIvan]

You can still be very well paid and work on Open Source projects. Many companies pay developers to work on Open Source projects for cost efficiency reasons - it's cheaper to say, commit a few developers to an Open Source project where labour and testing costs are spread out over several firms (and others), rather than bear the burden of all the development costs solo.

Regards, Ivan

[Golden Eagle]

Many companies pay developers to work on Open Source projects

But obviously the money from software companies runs out eventually, if they're giving their software away or being replaced by those that do. The free software guys say they plan on making their money for "support". Who in the heck wants to have to pay for software support? Or be using software that needs it?

[softwarecreator]

That's an interesting point, I didn't realize this was a practice.  Makes sense, but I guess my confusion is that if they give it away for free, where's the benefit for the company?