You asked "Put another way, are there many people devoting their entire working lives to OSS with no other compensation or resources, essentially going bankrupt to write OSS?" He answered, "I wound up nearly going into debt". There are different meanings of "bankrupt", but "out of money" is a reasonable definition to use in this situation.
Besides that, it's in extremely poor taste to marginalize someone's sacrifice of two years just because you think they're privileged. It's usually better to make much of someone's contributions than to minimize them.
> Besides that, it's in extremely poor taste to marginalize someone's sacrifice
I didn't marginalize it. I said the ability to do it is rare. Those are very different things.
I think it would be great to live in a society where people can do what GP did without going into debt, but that will require bigger structural changes.
Besides that, it's in extremely poor taste to marginalize someone's sacrifice of two years just because you think they're privileged. It's usually better to make much of someone's contributions than to minimize them.