My biggest issue with it is that they made a great demo yet they didn't really have a useful framework. They kept things hush hush for too long , with a lot of teasing and by the time they released something, people moved on.
Compare to what ionic did, and i'm not a big fan of it, but the ionic team demonstrated the usefulness of their framework quite fast with concrete apps.
As for making money obviously, you make money with consulting, cloud services,tools for professionals and co, but you need a community at first place. Famo.us never had a one.
That said, they were in fact making an effort to increase adoption with initiatives like Famous University, famous-angular and various project demos and usable widgets.
The answer to why they struggled to increase adoption so much isn't that clear to me, but what I do know is that they had a lavish office in an expensive part of SF, free food and a relatively large, well-paid staff.
Compare to what ionic did, and i'm not a big fan of it, but the ionic team demonstrated the usefulness of their framework quite fast with concrete apps.
As for making money obviously, you make money with consulting, cloud services,tools for professionals and co, but you need a community at first place. Famo.us never had a one.