Millions of fanfiction writers would like to have a word with you... Not to mention all the authors of comments on this very site, some of which are, at least, good enough to be paid articles somewhere, or in cooperation with other commenters could be turned (as whole threads) into short books in their own right.
Put another way: the music industry could entirely vanish overnight, and people would still sing in the shower and when drinking with their buddies.
Some people tend to express themselves in some way, and they would do it regardless of literally anything. We've achieved high literacy rates, which gave a tool of expression that is writing to a correspondingly high number of people. It's not exactly surprising that we now have a flourishing environment of Web novels and all kinds of written content outside of the "market" and publishing industry as a whole.
But it's not something specific to our times. Plenty of writers in history did starve do death. One of "the three greatest" poets of my country did precisely that: he wasn't published, he wasn't even read much, and when he was, he was ridiculed for it. Yet he had been writing anyway; then, he died in extreme poverty, leaving just a lot of paper behind. It took some 40 years IIRC for someone to "rediscover" the stash of hand-written poems, and now his works are being taught in highschools.
In yet other words: no, not everything has to be related to money. Many things are, yes, but not all. Writing as a profession that published (and paid) authors do is all fine and good, but it's just one side of writing, not its definition.
> Norwid led a tragic and often poverty-stricken life (once he had to live in a cemetery crypt). He experienced increasing health problems, unrequited love, harsh critical reviews, and increasing social isolation.
...and yet his works are easily (IMO) the best among the three of them (the two others would be Mickiewicz and Słowacki).
Getting paid is fine and dandy. What's false is that "without a business model", nobody would be "insane enough" to write books (or programs).
The conflation between doing a thing and getting paid for doing a thing -- or even worse, claiming that without monetary compensation said thing wouldn't exist -- is annoying and misleading.
The best software is usually already the one written by volunteers.
You mean written by people who are not professional software developers? I highly doubt that. Can you provide some examples?
I meant the best software is written without expectation of remuneration.
My impression was that most successful open source projects (Linux, Mozilla etc) are driven by paid contributors.
I'm sure you can find some examples, but depending on your opinion on what the "best software" is, I doubt most of it is developed by people working for free.
Being paid for writing is great. It's just that the paid writing is not all writing - some people write simply to be read, without needing or wanting to be paid for it.
Writing code is different, because it's a means of self-expression only in small part.
And you are using this as an argument why authors don't need income? Surely they didn't write anything after they starved, so it seem lack of income did affect the output.
Getting paid by publishers for writing books is a powerful motivator, but not the only one. In a world without a way to sell books, writers would still write.
I can agree with that. We have stuff like fan fiction which people write and share for free. I guess 50 Shades of Grey is the preeminent example of writing as a passion and as a calling rather than a professional skill.
There are authors whose main body of work was only published after their deaths and who are considered literary masters nonetheless, and not fanfiction writers.
All in all, I agree with a sibling comment: we must divorce the business of writing with the art of writing. They are related, of course, but the latter doesn't require the former. Once one understands this, one is less inclined to claim things such as "if writers don't get paid, books won't get written".
That is kind of the definition of professional though.
Writing, like any other skill, takes time and practice to master. If you can't dedicate yourself full time you will not reach your highest potential. And it requires some form of income to be able to dedicate yourself full time. Just like a professional pianist will be better than an amateur.
The second sentence here doesn't really follow from the first. I mean, assuming that only time and practice are needed for mastery, then practicing less-than-full-time only makes it correspondingly longer to reach mastery - it doesn't make it impossible, like you claim.
In reality, time and practice are not the only factors, though. You have to account for talent, which not only sets the upper bound on the quality of your writing, but also influences the rate of improvement with practice. It's not exactly unheard of for a debutant's work to be "way better than the latest work of established master X", isn't it? Talent is hard to capture and define, but it's a real thing, especially in the arts, although it also plays a part in trades and crafts (that's where the "10x programmers" and similar concepts come from...)