>> In 1995, the year PCRE2 was born, I was doing classic MacOS GUI programming on a 680x0 machine, running Metrowerks CodeWarrior as my IDE, and relying on a bu

>> In 1995, the year PCRE2 was born, I was doing classic MacOS GUI programming on a 680x0 machine, running Metrowerks CodeWarrior as my IDE, and relying on a bunch of tools that are now gone. The proprietary technology I used in those days is now almost universally extinct True, but I was using Windows in '95, and it still exists. I even use the odd bit of software from that era (typically small command line things.) And I'm still using Word and Excel. So I'm not sure your comparison holds water. In the sense that some companies keep developing a product forever, and some have a history of ending things all the time. That's of course equally true for Free Software projects. Most have been abandoned. Most have been replaced over time. Your point about business is spot on. If you want to make software your business then you will spend most of your time on the business part not the software part. Consulting is one path to income. Unfortunately consulting on proprietary software pays better than consulting on Free Software [1]. Equally consulting on some large (free) product pays better than consulting on your own product [2]. Which of course is all fine. There is no reason your income anc passion have to be related. [1] obviously I'm talking generally. But for example SAP pays better than PostgreSQL. [2] still a generalization, but the market for say PostgreSQL consulting dwarfs the market for say MyEditor consulting.