My point is that the OP doesn't >lack awareness of other forms of capital, they're asserting that those aren't sufficient on their own, and that one of the reasons for that is the risk that stems from stepping down being something that you can fail at in the first place, with the consequences of cementing a reputation of "being bad at being a person" regardless of anything that's happened to that point. You don't have the opportunity of accumulating reputation without having that risk at the end, unlike a career, where you have the opportunity of taking a job that pays a regular paycheck regardless of whether you leave at the drop of a hat and burn all your bridges by doing so.

> My point is that the OP doesn't >lack awareness of other forms of capital, they're asserting that those aren't sufficient on their own

OP said "it should be paid" because "it is a job", and so the rejection of that claim is two-fold: 1) Uncertainty in the expected value of payment does not change the fact that it's payment, 2) Payment in units other than dollars is still payment. If I get paid in bitcoins, the bitcoin market could completely collapse before I cash out. It's not different than that.

OP's specific written framing, that because it's a job it needs to be paid, which is only additive commentary if OP believes that it isn't being paid, disagrees with your prediction about what OP really secretly bases their statement on.

We can look further back in OP's comment as well:

> The movement grew out of frustration that commercial software cannot be freely improved and fixed by the user

This is only fractionally true, and it is only true in an unpaid way for a desire to consume free software. It is not true in an unpaid way for the desires to produce or maintain free software. Those are done because the producers and maintainers experience some kind of reward from doing so.