

Ruby hacker proposes to quit his job and work only on OSS while living on donation money - luccastera
http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2008/03/id_love_to_quit_my_job_sort_of.html

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utnick
I think this model would work better if he wanted to take time off to start up
and develop a new OSS project.

I can see a lot of people donating to get 'Some really cool project' built.

But I doubt that faster bug fixes and improved documentation in open source
reporting software is worth 60$ to too many people if you take away the feel
good factor of donating to open source

~~~
jmelesky
On the other hand, i certainly know of businesses using open source projects
that would happily pay someone external to fix a bug or add a feature to a
given project. Why they wouldn't just assign one of their own developers is a
mystery, but that's the way it is.

~~~
boucher
There are plenty of businesses that do pay people to work on various open
source projects. Google, Apple, IBM, possibly even Microsoft.

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staunch
The Perl Foundation (<http://foundation.perl.org/>) has done this quite a bit.
There's a good model to follow.

Hacker News' own benhoyt has <http://micropledge.com/> which seems well suited
to the task.

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huherto
I find it hard to convince a corporation to donate money for an OSS. It would
need approval from people not familiar with OSS. May be the model is to do it,
thru consulting. For example, start working in Ruport, then advertise your
self as a Ruport consultant, find some customers that are willing to pay for
support or consulting, as you are able to charge for it, you can spend more
time working in the project. I think several people have been able to do it.
Companies are used to pay for support or consulting, they are not used to pay
for something that is already free.

Some companies have been able to do it with great success. SpringOne, JBoss,
JGoodies come to my mind.

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maryrosecook
There are a number of examples of this. For instance, the guy who developed
Passage, Jason Rohrer, lives entirely off donations
([http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason-
rohrer/supportMyWork...](http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason-
rohrer/supportMyWork.php)) and he releases all his software under the GNU GPL.

~~~
suboptimal
Thanks for posting this; I enjoyed reading about his lifestyle:

[http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason-
rohrer/simpleLife.ht...](http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason-
rohrer/simpleLife.html)

People who are determined can Find a Way.

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nickb
I'd throw in some cash the second he decides to try this. Working full-time on
something is much more productive than working evenings.

~~~
staticshock
is he working on something you need, or would you just support him for the
sake of idealism?

if you do need the end product, then it seems reasonable enough. but if it's
idealism you seek, how many hackers should set up donation bins before you
stop donating to each new one?

------
halo
Something similar happened before with the Haiku OS project back in 2005 when
Axel Dörflel worked on it full time for a few months using donated funds.
(Link: <http://haikunews.org/print/1125>)

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wallflower
Bram Cohen (who supports his family off of grateful BitTorrent users) is the
exception. A lot of programmers are paid to work on open source (however, they
are mostly employed by large Open Source advocates like IBM).

~~~
csmajorfive
I'm not so sure he supported his family on donations for very long. BitTorrent
turned into a pretty well funded venture (of which he is chief scientist) a
while ago.

