[blittle]

That's a poor analogy. An ice cream parlor offers free icecream purely to market thier product and drive business. An OSS dev gets nothing.

[saagarjha]

Nothing? Not at all: an open source developer gets the marketing/publicity benefit just like an ice cream parlor does. Why do you think companies open source their things? And as a solo developer, I get tons of high-quality inbound leads for job opportunities, get to interact with lots of smart people (many whom I end up forming long-lasting friendships with), and get other people to help improve and support my project with me. Plus I get the warm fuzzy feeling inside or high moral ground, or whatever you want to call it. If you’re not getting that from your open source work, why are you doing it anyways?

[yawaramin]

Would you do your current job for free for, say, six months to earn 'exposure' and 'warm fuzzy feelings'?