Being a Chef seldom pays bills too, but it doesn't mean you should stop so you can get a job at McDonalds. (And once you get that McDonalds job, it doesn't mean you have to stop cooking good food).

Actually it does, as I only equate Chefs with restaurants that tend to be on cuisine magazines.

> Actually it does, as I only equate Chefs with restaurants that tend to be on cuisine magazines.

But sadly this isn't true in the real world. When I think of a Chef I think of a great cook, someone who doesn't need someone else to tell them how to mix ingredients. It's a disservice to the chef to go and waste their time at McDonalds, but it's pretty rare you become successful a la Gordon Ramsey or something.

It's not a very smart decision to put all that time and effort into learning to be a master chef just to throw it away at some corporate place where no one appreciates you.

But hey if you need the money and your food isn't all that great anyway...

Life is made of choices.

This is a false dichotomy. Some of the best open source work has been done by folks who do pull in a salary from a commercial venture. A few of those are designated open-source positions, but the vast majority are just people who contribute on the side.

And I hope you can appreciate how demeaning it is to call your time contributing to open source a "phase".

What I call a phase was the idea that I would be able to live just from open source no matter which type of business area.

I still work with open source tools and do contribute occasionally with bug reports, bug fixes, advocacy and money.

Just don't believe any longer that all types of business are possible with open source. Many just don't go along with it, at least for those that want to their their bills.