Several companies used Hecl code, including one that was later sold to BlackBerry, so there was some demand for it commercially, just that apparently the code was good enough or clear enough that they didn't need any further involvement from me.

My point is that for people to start hiring you at a high hourly rate, there's got to be a burning demand, whereas with a product or app, the costs are much lower, so it's easy to spread them around.

> Certainly if you make something people want, people will pay you to develop it

Only after a certain critical mass, that is a lot higher than what it is for a proprietary project, where all sales feed back into the project. I mean, I certainly don't pay people to develop Linux, Postgres, Ruby, Rails, gcc or any of the other projects I use, although I do try and contribute back where possible.

BTW, strange but true story: I probably made the most money off of Hecl doing a BlackBerry port for... of all people, PASOK, the Greek center-left political party. This was all before the country ran out of money, and I did get paid.