I don't know about that. I think it's because his target market generally doesn't have a lot of money and or there isn't that much of a demand for bingo card apps. Everyone around here says he is great in business. Yet, he's barely making a living on it after many years.
Can you point to any projects on which you have expended equally little effort with greater reward? Honestly, $25k a year isn't bad for a niche product that just became a real business (as opposed to a little project started on a lark) this year. You seem to be criticizing him for failing to achieve a goal he didn't have.
You keep pointing to the "five years" number, but you're not specifying five years as what. Because the answer is, "Five years as a Java program with minimal effort going into its growth or profitability for most of the time." You might say Photoshop existed for years in its creator's head — that doesn't mean Adobe should have said, "This unimplemented software idea has made zero profit. It's clearly DOA. We're not going to expend the resources to implement it."
"Can you point to any projects on which you have expended equally little effort with greater reward? Honestly, $25k a year isn't bad for a niche product that just became a real business (as opposed to a little project started on a lark) this year. You seem to be criticizing him for failing to achieve a goal he didn't have."
$25K is fine for a small project started on a lark. But it's not for a person that is proclaimed as a business deity in the hacker news world (and JoS).
"You might say Photoshop existed for years in its creator's head"
Photoshop has a huge market and makes millions of dollars a year. Within the first 5 years, It was most likely already clear that the market was there (it should be with any business).
Patrick has talent. If I were him, I would have moved into a more profitable market. Especially since, as you say, it doesn't seem to take him any time at all to work on it.
