> While building a career over such a project like KDE is certainly laudable it seems it leaves people in a very precarious position where the number of companies worldwide where you can be employed at any given time can be counted with the fingers in one hand, with some to spare

Your average KDE contributor is an expert in at least two widely used technologies, C++ and Qt, and typically in several more. Purely KDE-related work may not be a huge employment market, but trust me it's not that hard for KDE folks to find work in general, and you will find them in many high places.

That is to say that contributing is definitely not putting you into any precarious career positions :-)

Agreed from the technical point of view

But it seems most members of the community keep looking for jobs within the community and forget to look elsewhere