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First up, this article is 17 years old. There's no reason to assume the author has exactly the same opinions today.

More importantly, the author is talking about the realities of trying to earn a decent living shipping independent software. That requires paying customers.

It's perfectly reasonable to want to be paid for your work, and it certainly doesn't warrant the vitriol in your comment.

Is a commercial software vendor not supposed to care how many sales they make?

Please tell me at least you don't work some software corp where it's someone else's job to worry about the business, if you're going to pass that kind of judgement.