Mostly you are right. Mostly. The way I see this is: if the developer share something, start a thread here (or any other forum/site) it is for some reason. You can hide among fairy tales claims that tjey do it for themselves. If so, why share? For the fame? Most of them are "recognized developers", which obviously means something to them.
They do it in their spare time - true. But some of them have a link to donation in their profiles. I don't know how much money they earn this way, but you can't say they do it for nothing.
Also, what I noticed after being xda member for few years: developers often demand "respect". But very often they don't show respect to their users. Personally I found it very disrespectful, when the developer says new release at monday", and then is quoet for the next week. Not a single word, if the rom is ready or not, why it is delayed, nothing.
It seems that
@Wolfbreak has something more important to do, and nobody can blaim him for this. But writing a single sentence, like "new release will be delayed for few days" doesn't take much time, and can spare a lot of misunderstanding and frustration for users.
All I wrote above is my peronal, subjective opinion. You can agree or not, I don't care.
Now back to waiting for new release (which I'm dying to see and flash to be clear)