It is easier to get money by selling things and fame by giving away things. If you get sufficiently famous, you can sell some of it for money.
DHH got his money from 37signals, fame from Rails.
PG got his money from Viaweb, fame from his writing.
Zuck got sufficiently famous.
What do you want more first? Fame or money? If you choose fame, be ready to stick it out until you can sell some for money. That's how most big hit startup founders got rich.
True businessmen are rare.
That's why, Bezos is my hero. He set out to build a great business and did just that. Building a great new technology business is far more impressive to me than throwing apps on the wall to see which one sticks.
Step 1: Steal Underpants (Build software) Step 2: Step 3: Profit!
You know, I kind of like that we have this aversion. If the Internet is the first true global common space, the open source 'movement' is one of the coolest things we've ever done as humans let alone software developers.
Not to drink the Koolaid too much. Just think about it, is my point.
I have exactly this problem right now. I think my biggest block right now is that
try charging money for it before you give it away
is not an effortless thing to do. One has to invest money and time to set up a payment gateway, and then one has the responsibility to respond to customers and maintain the app.
What would you suggest I do in a situation like this?
One has to invest money and time to set
up a payment gateway, and then one has
the responsibility to respond to customers
and maintain the app.
For the rest, your responsibilities don't really change. Either you're going to respond to your users (customers) and maintain the app, or you're not. That has nothing to do with money.
If you aren't planning on supporting an app, you should probably make that clear in the first place. Remember: Your users are investing their time in you, and to them that's worth at least as much as their money.
Absolutely build apps for the fun of it, feel free to scratch your own itch, but if you build a useful product, try charging money for it before you give it away for nothing. If nobody wants to pay for it then you can always GPL your code and hope for the best, but releasing software under Free licenses by default robs you of big income opportunities.