>
> Meanwhile, in this world, people have to pay their bills. How does
> "free" software cope with that?
Lots of people do volunteer work/community service that is more or less
"subsidized" by their wage gig (or their parents' wage gig). The fact
that some paid programmers do OSS on the side is pretty much analogous
to any community service work in our society. In a capitalist society,
is it likely that all software could be produced "on the side" like
this? No. But just like any other community service work, it's a
little, practical demonstration that good stuff can happen outside the
circle of commodities and profit-taking.
Miles