I realize their OpenSource and are funded in part by donations and contributions but do the developers even make money?

Why would a large site which is visited so much not even advertise?

Just wondering ;)

Hi,

Pair Networks will pay for the hosting and bandwidth etc

I doubt that the developers work on the software full time, it's just a hobby like fishing. It also feels good to give back to a community which has helped you in the past. Lots of Bill Gates leaches out there though, who take and never give back. Bring back the death penalty ;)

:)

Rob

Ever visit sourceforge? Who needs advertising to fund a project when you have thousands of developers looking for things to do. Besides, if they were to make money off the open source project, who would pocket the money? Would it be divided among all of the developers?

The beauty of open source as far as I can see is that it can save a lot of money for the developers and their clients aswell.

If someone needs to integrate an e-commerce solution for one of their clients, rather than pay for an off the shelf commercial solution, they'll charge an installation and customisation or feture enhancement fee, then they have a library of open source stuff available that'll give them a starting point, then any relevant customisations or new features that they add for their clients during that job is put back into the open source library for future use.

Not sure if oscommerce works in this way, but it wouldn't surprise me if the main developers of that are making their money from installing and customising it for their clients.