How many people make living of the LinuxCNC?

I have been thinking and speculating about how many people make living off the LinuxCNC software and affiliated hardware? (I do not mean people who use LinuxCNC to control theirs CNC machines, but who develop and support the CNC ecosystem.) We have some prime examples in Mesa or Pico hardware solutions and Tormach. But then there must be others.

its a community so times of develop are not fixed somtimes like 2 peaople boost the system somtimes one 1 fixes bugs

we are all part of the future

I made a type in the title. I meant "living off" in as a make monthly wage on regular basis. Like SUSE or RedHat or Canonical of Linux world.

And I have seemed to make another typo in the post explaining about my typo. Great. I have been thinking if there is a change to turn time spent studying the code into some kind of employment.

We have paid people for writing drivers but those have
also been fixed term per project contracts.

I have another example.

If a company has 100 employees using window's.
You can ask a nice price to change this into a Ubuntu system.
More and more companies will take this step in the future. My price for 100 pc's is 10k.

Grotius wrote:

I have another example.

If a company has 100 employees using window's.
You can ask a nice price to change this into a Ubuntu system.
More and more companies will take this step in the future. My price for 100 pc's is 10k.

Sorry Grotius, I think if I had a business with 100 people, I'd have them all hooked up to Google Gsuite and be running chromebooks. There are only 3 OS specific applications I use that are not browser based.
Linuxcnc,
Photo management
CAD design. (Could be cloud based with Onshape)

andypugh wrote:

There are a few companies using LinuxCNC in their product (PocketNC and Tormach at least).

Tormach probably has someone who is capable of doing quick patches. PocketNC and JD2 are both using Machinekit, as far as I know.

andypugh wrote:

I have carefully avoided ever being paid for anything.

That is great. And I salute you, sir. Unfortunately, I need to eat and to have roof over my head when I am sleeping and because of that wage is needed very much.

PCW wrote:

We have paid people for writing drivers but those have
also been fixed term per project contracts.

Yes, but in broader sense, you are using LinuxCNC to further your business. You are a producer of hardware without which the project would not be where it is today. (So I am counting it from this point.)

Grotius wrote:

I have another example.

If a company has 100 employees using window's.
You can ask a nice price to change this into a Ubuntu system.
More and more companies will take this step in the future. My price for 100 pc's is 10k.

Company with 100 PCs usually means with about 100 employees. This kind of company really needs at least one full time IT technician.