I think it is a problem that it is very hard to monetize open source infrastructure libraries. In the past, you could try to do consulting or else offer paid hosting. Now with the cloud providers doing "zero management" hosting of open source libraries, both those avenues have been seriously curtailed.
Honestly, it seems like if you are the primary author of a popular open source library, your best bet is try to leverage that notoriety into getting hired by one of the cloud companies, and try to work on the open source library as a side project. Trying to use that open source library to support yourself any other way, seems destined for penury and misery.
no, this is not so black & white. Lets take it in two parts 'Free' and 'Open Source'. One use of Open Source is to participate in science; define, expand, fork, integrate, extend. A different use of 'Free' is to become the standard upon which the infrastructure depends; hard game, but big results.
One author may steer or originate, but over time, Free and Open Source, is the work of many authors, many architectural components, and many network nodes.
Said another way, to understand the motivations of Free and Open Source, one must be able to see beyond one author, to the effects on systems, and systems of systems. Much of the benefits of both Free and Open Source, are not mainly to one author, but to systems, and over time.
This is important, as much of basic computing would not exist as it is now, except for sacrifice and insights by earlier authors and teams.
For a large, VC-backed open-source startup with many employees, yes, the cloud providers have made this obsolete to a large extent, Open Core not withstanding.
For a single author of a popular open-source product or library, it's still very possible to earn a good living working on the thing that you built.
I think it is a problem that it is very hard to monetize open source infrastructure libraries. In the past, you could try to do consulting or else offer paid hosting. Now with the cloud providers doing "zero management" hosting of open source libraries, both those avenues have been seriously curtailed.
Honestly, it seems like if you are the primary author of a popular open source library, your best bet is try to leverage that notoriety into getting hired by one of the cloud companies, and try to work on the open source library as a side project. Trying to use that open source library to support yourself any other way, seems destined for penury and misery.