Why the scare quotes? Well, I don't mean all profit according to definition, but specifically the "returns for investors" type. Company profits. Technically you can run a sole proprietorship, and make (say) $100k in profit.. or you could structure as a corporation, pay yourself a $100k salary, and make no profit. It's all the same money, but it's two ways of looking at the portion that I would like to describe as fair compensation to a human for the work they do. When I say "at cost", I don't mean that it's fundamentally impossible to make a living working on OSS; I mean it's fundamentally impossible to get filthy rich with it.

And in my opinion that's a good thing. In my experience, "getting filthy rich" / providing outsized returns to investors almost always comes at someone else's expense. Usually the little guy. It happens when the poor sod paying you can't afford to switch to a competitor, so you're able to wring them dry. The counter-argument goes that we need the "filthy rich" incentive to motivate people to make these things. I think it likely increases the rate of innovation, but I think the amount of cool and useful OSS written by people in their spare time is evidence enough that profit is not a requirement in that area, only financial security.

There is a problem, though, where it's currently very difficult to even make a living wage working on OSS (again, or public goods in general). I think can be solved, and I am working on a project trying to solve this (as a volunteer; we could use help). I'll cut it here (I spent far too much time writing this comment already...), but you can read more at https://wiki.snowdrift.coop