Not sure about this model. I write open source software because of the inherent human desire to create. Benefits from admiration I receive comes a distant secon

Not sure about this model. I write open source software because of the inherent human desire to create. Benefits from admiration I receive comes a distant second to the happiness of exploring a problem then crafting a nice solution, on my own time, in my own way. In a lot of ways, working without compensation then freely releasing the output is weirdly selfish. It is appealing because you are so free from the obligations to others brought by getting paid. Users might invest time in using your software, and it is this time they feel robbed of when things go awry. I have been on both sides of this. I used to become very angry when something doesn't work right out of the box after quickly skimming a setup tutorial. At the time I was working for salary. Any free time I had was very valuable and couldn't be sucked up doing the same thing I do at work - debugging config issues, retrying with different options or environmental changes, etc. It was only after becoming a part time independent contractor that I developed the patience to really deal with open source software. To feel I had enough mental energy to really read the documentation or look inside the source code and debug what's going on - totally different from the customer service experience of dealing with proprietary software. People become frustrated when the effort needed to understand or deal with something is beyond what they are willing to put in. I don't think open source can escape its problems until a substantial portion of users have the time and energy to really engage with it. We should be working far fewer hours than we actually do.