I think you should replace "making a profit" to "making a living" off his own work. Just because he's a genius does not mean he hasn't every right to monetize

I think you should replace "making a profit" to "making a living" off his own work. Just because he's a genius does not mean he hasn't every right to monetize his own works as he sees fit. Monetizing OSS is hard and a lot of the time the possible revenue streams are a time-suck. He may not be interested in spending his own time and prefer just instead to licence his work as-is the norm for software producers. From all I've read he's more than happy to receive invitations for licensing of his work, whether or not he'd accept a lump sum to Open Source some of his work is not known. Anyway this is all speculation, if you're genuinely curious you should email him (which is active as I received a reply from him today :) He has remained independent doesn't work for academia or any mega-tech corp and continues to pursue his own interests. I think he has every right to carve out his own path and produce software as he sees fit.