Yup, I'm the same way. If I could work in FOSS, I'd be happy to take a pay cut, but FOSS doesn't pay anywhere near good enough. So it'll remain a hobby.

As such, I'm pretty reasonable about what needs to be open source, and what's fine being proprietary. For example:

• OS - must be FOSS
• games - proprietary is fine, but no privileged access (e.g. kernel level anti-cheat)
• web browser - must be FOSS
• web services - proprietary is fine, provided they don't collect a creepy amount of info about me

Basically, the more risk there is of a security issue, the more I expect it to be FOSS. And I'm willing to help out too. I've submitted patches to Lemmy and other FOSS projects I use, and I'll donate something similar to what I'd pay for a proprietary app for certain projects.

This sort of thing can't really be done in capitalism at all. Open Source (as it was advanced by Eric S. Raymond and the Mozilla Project back in the late 90s) was always stuck in a capitalist way of thinking.

In a society where everyone has their basic needs met and people are expected to contribute what they can, writing FOSS can be your contribution.

In some "ecosystems" everything being free is kinda how you are compensated, instead of money. You spend time making your thing for free, but so does everyone else so you don't have to pay for those things either. The two main examples I've personally been involved with are game modding and 3d printing models, I use the free stuff other people make all the time, releasing the things I make for free is how I pay it back.

But yeah, if you use something you really like, throw them a buck or two for the work.
...although I've donated about as much as I've received as donations myself. Eh. No matter.