I use a shell script for a new debian[0] installation and also have other scripts for kubuntu[1], opensuse[2] and other software installations. I store my dotfiles[3] and other useful scripts that I can customize for each development environment. Hope that helps!
Not entirely true. You can monetize around the open source software you built but this largely depends on what you built. In this case, she is expecting to raise 30k for a feed reader, when there are already open sourced readers with a similar functionality(?).
... and dont forget the few thousand FOSS projects already freely available on Gitorious, Github, Bitbucket, Google-Code, Launchpad, Sourceforge and ... so many more !