Someones got to pay. May be other revenue streams subsidizing the open source work. But its naive to believe that support & services alone can sustain a softwar

Someones got to pay. May be other revenue streams subsidizing the open source work. But its naive to believe that support & services alone can sustain a software producer. Imagine would Red Hat be able to sell its version of Linux for the cost that it does if it were to produce the whole thing? Remember the guy who contributes to the overall effort cannot live on air and water. Could be large corporations(IBM, Sun) or the State(any country with strong social security, free education etc), putting the money to support the people working on open source.