I still do voluntary work, but not as much as in my starting point. I am still posting support forum posts, when I have the time, I am testing new code, report issues, but only if it is related to my needs and experience.
Yeah there are users like me involved in different projects, do some voluntary work till get experienced, and then try to create a functional business model. I had my contributions in voluntary work, but I cannot live with voluntary work.
Well, it has to be a business. Nobody does free voluntary work these days, and developers also. The visible and nice side of it: wow free CMS, free support. The invisible side: donations, Adds and shop. It looks like a business fair enough.
OSM is a business, so as every other business, it has to ensure the future. Seems users like to dig Joomla forum and extension directory, ask for free solutions, but more and more extensions go commercial at a certain point, so developers have to ri…