One emulator earning 20k (!) a month is an outlier - it's also not open source. There's still the marketing issue. If I was to work on open source full time I'

One emulator earning 20k (!) a month is an outlier - it's also not open source. There's still the marketing issue. If I was to work on open source full time I'd need to get about $2kAUD a month. That kind of income doesn't just happen - you've got to have an extremely popular project first. Also remember that Patreon's gotta start making money for the VCs soon so there will be user hostile changes eventually. Bring on universal basic income.