Not sure if this is appropriate for TEX.SX, but I'll ask anyway. Though not a question on the use or feature of (La)TeX and friends, this question is relevant inasmuch as it is about the financial aspect of the development of TeX-related systems.
I'm curious how (La)TeX (and related) projects are financially supported. I can understand how individual packages can be written by TeX enthusiasts (in their spare time, presumably). Thus financial support is not really an issue in those cases. This is like how one would spend a Sunday afternoon writing a Wikipedia article on mathematics or English literature, simply because they are interested in those topics. A previous question addresses the time devotion aspect of LaTeX development.
But it seems unlikely, to me at least, that a random group of TeX enthusiats can just pull off a big LaTeX project purely as a hobby (I imagine that LaTeX3 for example would require a tremendous amount of time commitment and large scale coordination). Wikipedia solicits donation once a year. But I haven't seen anything similar in LaTeX (although LaTeX has a much smaller user group than Wikipedia).
I hope the talk of money wouldn't offend anyone here.
But it seems unlikely, to me at least, that a random group of TeX enthusiasts can just pull off a big LaTeX project purely as a hobby
latex2e was written on a purely voluntary basis by a group of tex enthusiasts. Later sales of the Companion later helped with travel money and things, but none of us were doing it as part of our main job.