I've built a few open source things in the past, a couple of which got popular. One was an open data project and it's just stayed the same (free API etc). Community look after it mostly.
Another was what became Certify The Web, which is now the most popular UI for automated certificate management on Windows and is most definitely now a commercial product (but 90% of users use the free version). I originally had a donate button and did get a couple of donations, maybe 4 or 5.
It was getting thousands of downloads per week and the company I was working for went into administration, so on the same day I added a Paypal button to the website for people to buy a license key and got my first sale later that evening. It's now had around 10K customers over 7 years and they renew their license key each year. Some people/companies do indeed want support and updates (I offer email support only, or there is a community forum). Nowadays most purchase via Stripe,
Another was what became Certify The Web, which is now the most popular UI for automated certificate management on Windows and is most definitely now a commercial product (but 90% of users use the free version). I originally had a donate button and did get a couple of donations, maybe 4 or 5.
It was getting thousands of downloads per week and the company I was working for went into administration, so on the same day I added a Paypal button to the website for people to buy a license key and got my first sale later that evening. It's now had around 10K customers over 7 years and they renew their license key each year. Some people/companies do indeed want support and updates (I offer email support only, or there is a community forum). Nowadays most purchase via Stripe,