I totally agree to Chip Bennett's comment and also think that Kevin did mentioned it well.

I am as user not willed to pay any price for something that might possibly harm my system, because what most developers forget is that due to the fact they are releasing under GPL they can not be hold for security issues and therefore resulting effects, neither on law nor on moral perspective.

So how could a developer get into making money out of beloved work?

Surely not through donations or similar ways which heavily depend on the 'big spender' to generate an income that might make a living of it.

It is surely the own way to operate right, if you decide to keep things real and not only code the great plug-in or theme for our favorite blog/cms-system, if you are able and willed to give support on a fixed rate.

Personally i have to make the addition, that it wouldn't and won't fit my aims as a developer. But i think that is the only way, besides building a small community of your best friends and transform these into partners, to gain profit. Though the last might sound dreamy, isn't it the way how good and in long term profitable agencies roll up?

I think it can all be reduced to two aspects:

a) Any developer who is willed to put strength, time, concentration and love into his/her creation has to realize that the coding itself might be possible as a soloist. The distribution might also be, but the monetizing won't.

b) Codes are kids. They have to grow. They leave. We have to accept that. And often these kids die before their creators. And we think of it as 'that wasn't well designed'. Would we ever think about kids that way? So finally we have to accept that good code work or even bad, has it's right to exist but we have to feed it and support it.

As a conclusion:

If we think we can 'create' and 'generate' code we can't be proud of it. But pride is essentially to live of and off your own work.

I think it's just the question of stating a decision. In this case it is the decision of 'to be willed to take the limitations and do the work needed' or 'i just wanna humble around, make some here, some there and please get off me...'.

Okay, to stay true to the game there is an option left:

Be normal. Be part of the society. Don't dream.

We have to decide...