But in my opinion if you want to earn money, then you should look for some sort of employment, and not be a volunteer in a project that's very famous about being built by volunteers, and demand to be paid (or else). If you don't want to be an unpaid volunteer anymore (which is a very fair thing to do), there are much more graceful ways to achieve that.
I don't think Linux has been primarily built by volunteers for decades, Red Hat, Canonical, IBM, and a great many other companies employ people to work on it because it's a product that they sell.
> A: Hey man, how is it going?
> B: Not good, have been without a job for over a year :(
> A: Aww... what happened? Did recruiters stop using LinkedIn? Or you made your profile private?
> B: Nah, I have no LinkedIn profile...
> A: Gotcha, M$ is a pest. The how many CVs have you sent?
> B: 0. I don't believe in that.
> A: Then what did you do? Did you try to look for a job at all?
> B: Of course! I put a new signature in my emails. And then I barely sent an email to anyone.
> A: That's 1 sentence, with a dead link.
> B: That's what I'm talking about, exactly. Even with the dead link, I still can't find any jobs...
What do you say? Does that qualify as 'looking for some sort of employment'?
You asked if putting a single sentence with a dead link in an email signature counts as job searching (putting that signature in emails by a person who barely sends emails, by his own admission).
But in my opinion if you want to earn money, then you should look for some sort of employment, and not be a volunteer in a project that's very famous about being built by volunteers, and demand to be paid (or else). If you don't want to be an unpaid volunteer anymore (which is a very fair thing to do), there are much more graceful ways to achieve that.