There's no need for a sales and marketing team for a very well established and entrenched product.
He could make something very easily himself, 1-click to $X a month for some bit of software or service.
In fact, if he did it properly, he could be wealthy, or chose to hire a bunch of people to make his software even better.
Mozilla is a great org, but I'm not sure if they are the best example as I believe they depend on the benevolence (or strategic foresight) of entities like Google etc.
"Pepsi and Coke" are multibillion dollar commodity consumer brands - and have absolutely nothing to do with this.
"No project comes into being fully established"
Octave is well established, so he doesn't have that problem.
For those that are 'new' - it's extremely difficult for governments to decide how to allocate funding. There are 1000's of 'open source' ideas. It's very hard to tell which one's would work, and have merit. It seems this guy was able to make something on his own. Great.
Now he can generate some revenue and expand the project - OR - work full time somewhere else, and plug away at this in his spare time.
"Do that, instead of working on his project."
He's not going to be 'working on his project'. He's going to be 'working full time somewhere else' because his project has no income.
The time and energy he spends on some kind of 'revenue' is an 'investment' not a cost. Once it's up and running, there should hopefully be net surpluses. If it goes well, he can even hire a small team to do 'sales and marketing', and possibly hire some developers to make his project considerably better, so that it's even more useful to others, and possibly even more people want to use it.
There's no reason that he couldn't try to find a way to generate income from his project, it's creating a lot of value for others.
Paying money to each other as a fair exchange of value is how most of the world works, and it works well.
""Pepsi and Coke" are multibillion dollar commodity consumer brands - and have absolutely nothing to do with this."
Really? They're "established and entrenched products." I think they're a pretty good analogy here. Even if you are established and entrenched, you still have to advertise.
"Paying money to each other as a fair exchange of value is how most of the world works, and it works well."
Billions of people in poverty, and rising income inequality would say otherwise.
"Really? They're "established and entrenched products." I think they're a pretty good analogy here.
They are completely irrelevant to this discussion.
"Even if you are established and entrenched, you still have to advertise."
He has a widely adopted product without having advertised before. If he didn't advertise before, why would he have to now?
"Paying money to each other as a fair exchange of value is how most of the world works, and it works well."
Billions of people in poverty, and rising income inequality would say otherwise."
Total rubbish. In the last 40 years, the number of people in the world living in abject poverty has been more than cut in half.
Once China ended their Communist insanity, and embraced free markets in the 1980's, they've lifted 100's of millions out of poverty and they are flourishing.
I'll gather you've never worked in a business role?
He could make something very easily himself, 1-click to $X a month for some bit of software or service.
In fact, if he did it properly, he could be wealthy, or chose to hire a bunch of people to make his software even better.
Mozilla is a great org, but I'm not sure if they are the best example as I believe they depend on the benevolence (or strategic foresight) of entities like Google etc.