The jobs that these programmers seek and get are frequently compatible with their open-source work. And don't rule out private funding as a source of income. The answer is companies that get more value out of open source than what they invest in its sponsorship. The group wanted an efficient, reliable, and cost-effective HTTP server whose development they could at least partially control. Last but not least are the cooperative open-source initiatives like sourceXchange and CoSource .
Programmers respond with proposals for the projects they want to take.
Ideally, the process will result in cooperative funding for interesting projects and payment for programmers, all under the constant supervision of the marketplace. All software produced goes back to the shared pool as open source. It takes little research to discover that the question is not who's making money from open source, but who isn't. And new ways of making business out of open source are being invented every day. Perhaps you'll find Steve Ballmer, president of Microsoft, more convincing.