Some people resent people that find success in modest startups. Selling useful libraries to developers won't make you a billionaire, but it can create a comfort

Some people resent people that find success in modest startups. Selling useful libraries to developers won't make you a billionaire, but it can create a comfortable, steady revenue stream-- RAD game tools (in Seattle) has been doing this for a long time, selling things like video codecs and profilers and animation systems. You could write a basic version of these tools in a few months, so it's easy for some programmers to dismiss-- but companies can do basic math, and understand that a $5,000 licensing fee is much cheaper than 3 months of developer time!