I haven't seen any modules THAT high, thank goodness. But I can tell you, not only have I written a lot of my own enhancements, but I have also bought other developer's modules. And thanks to the small cost of their modules, it still cost me much less than buying one of those junky proprietary out-of-the-box options. I think for my latest project, I spent about $75 on addons... it saved me a bunch of time (which is valuable), and it saved me money.You can sell your modules even at $ 1000, your problems are because nobody will buy.
I sure do love free stuff, too, but I also don't see anything wrong with making money - it's what keeps the world going round . Oh, and opensource doesn't automatically mean free.. otherwise it would be Freeware. Nobody here is stealing from anyone. In fact, I think every developer that has commercial modules has also provided some free modules, too. It's not wrong for them to ask for money for their time, effort, and expertise. You can't think about the total sum of a developer's earnings for a module... that would be like saying Microsoft should only charge 1 cent for each program they sell because so many people buy them. Instead, you have to think about what the value of that module is to each person that buys it.