As someone who spent an enormous amount of free time with zero pay contributing to one of those open source cad tools you mentioned, i say good for her. Make that bag. I work in a low level job thats got nothing to do with open source nor with CAD because i spent way too much time waiting for open source to magically produce income. There is a spectrum between open source dreams and pragmatic reality. People who judge you are almost universally wrong in their assumptions and their worldview and listening to them was a waste of time. I hope she makes a million dollars and uses it to support open source projects.

I'm inclined to believe that the people who make proprietary software are the ones with the "wrong worldview", if there is such a thing. People with morals are not the ones at fault for making the world parasitic to its core.

You say you had to stop with the open source because you needed money. That has nothing to do with open source, and everything to do with the fact that you're not allowed to access the basic necessities of life if you don't allow yourself to be exploited for profit.

>the fact that you're not allowed to access the basic necessities of life if you don't allow yourself to be exploited for profit.

This is the underpinning of capitalism. Some people speculate that denying basic necessities is the only way to ensure that common people will be productive enough to make the wealthy people wealthier.

No it is the underpinning of civilization.

Funnily enough, in the eastern block almost everyone had to work. But as long as the wealthy people call themselves general secretary or commissar and talk about Marx it's all good, right?

Yes, our current civilization is capitalist. And no, obviously not.

Good people are often swayed to do evil for the promise riches earned can do enough good to buy back their soul later.

Trouble is, the timing is never right to get out when there is always another payday just within reach.

These days I an happy to be paid to teach anyone anything but I have no interest in writing proprietary software anymore for any amount of money.

Everything I know and have built is because of FOSS and I owe that community my creations built on their work.

Oxide & Friends had some recent episodes about keeping the lights on when working on open source. IIRC titled something like "Corporate Open Source Anti-Patterns."

TLDR: FOSS devs still need to eat, so we'd better come up with a sustainable biz model, so we can keep working on FOSS.

My play is I sell my advice and experience, and find companies willing to pay me to write open source software to meet their needs.

I have built a security firm that only audits code/ architecture and writes open source code and it can generate enough income to support a few people in a way I feel good about.

I try to put people before profit and that is probably why I am not cut out to be a billionaire.