
Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself - mraza007
I have been using open source software for a while. I feel like sometimes Open Source software is better than the proprietary ones. Since it allows you to customize and it gives you more control.<p>But the question is how do you sustain yourself while working fulltime on building&#x2F;maintaining open source software<p>What are some tips to get into open source and turn it into fulltime career
======
jbk
I've been working on VideoLAN (VLC, x264, other...) for most of my
professional life.

For a long time, I had other jobs, working at startups around video, and doing
VLC at nights and weekends and holidays.

And now, I built a couple of companies around Open Source multimedia, where we
do consulting, integration, custom development around software, applications
development, licensing, support and so on.

Those companies are now paying around 25 FTE. It's not too bad, but not
impressive either...

The employees are working most of their time on improvements of the open
source software, working for clients is a minority of their time.

But I've worked a lot, and by a lot, I really mean a fuckton... And the
rewards are not big.

~~~
londons_explore
Part of your reward is that traffic cone will stay in people's minds for
decades or maybe centuries longer than the products of most of us here.

~~~
AdrianB1
I tried to pay part of the rent with something like that and it never worked.
What am I doing wrong?

~~~
saagarjha
You’re assuming that all rewards must be legal tender.

~~~
Arnt
How do you think that remark sounds to people who actually work with
maintaining open source, and who have a rent to pay?

~~~
inimino
Like the truth?

~~~
Arnt
This is the year 2020.

That's also true, but does that sentence sound like the truth? Is truth and/or
accuracy the most important trait of the sentence, or even a significant
trait?

------
Lemmih
I have sponsors on Github and rake in a cool $2 per month. It's obviously less
after taxes so I also have a day job.

[https://github.com/sponsors/Lemmih](https://github.com/sponsors/Lemmih)

~~~
kthartic
Just curious (clicked on your GitHub profile), why Singapore? Do you remote
work/freelance? I'm thinking about moving to SE Asia and working remotely. It
would be cool to hear other HN user's experiences :)

~~~
Lemmih
I work for a bank. They also have an office in London but I like Singapore
more.

------
addictedcs
I've been working on SoundFingerprinting [1] for almost ten years now. Its
Shazam for developers. First 8 years I worked mostly during my free time and
weekends. 2 years ago, I decided to monetize the storage for the fingerprints.
There is a MIT licensed version of the storage [2], and a commercial one [3],
which is fine-tuned for thousands of hours of audio or video content. If you
are an enterprise customer, you will essentially need it at some point, and
will most probably have no problems paying for it.

Overall I invested a lot more time in it than the monetary reward I received.
I don't complain since I enjoy working on audio/video fingerprinting and
databases. On top of it, the pay at this stage is on par with a regular SE job
with the bonus of working on things that I enjoy. I can call it a bootstrapped
business now.

In some sense, I think about opensource similar to the work of art. You do it
because you genuinely like to create/build things and showcase them to the
general public. You don't do it because of the monetary reward. A good writer
is one that has to say something, not one who writes for the sole purpose of
getting on the NT bestselling list. Opensource is similar.

[1] -
[https://github.com/AddictedCS/soundfingerprinting](https://github.com/AddictedCS/soundfingerprinting)

[2] - RAM-based storage, bounded by memory limits

[3] - [https://emysound.com](https://emysound.com)

~~~
imglorp
Nice to see an open source audio fingerprint. I once interviewed at Mediaguide
(now defunct?) who scanned radio broadcasts so they could sell reporting to
advertisers when their ads ran, and record labels when their songs played.
There's probably a ton more applications.

~~~
addictedcs
Radio/TV broadcast analytics is the most frequent use case. At least I receive
a significant amount of questions regarding it, so the library has been
optimized for this task. YouTube ads detection is also an interesting case
that falls in this category.

Other use cases are divided between game development, repeating content
detection, robocalls detection, or just iOS/Android apps for Shazam like style
features.

Surprisingly a couple of times, I was asked about recognizing birds by their
singing. The library can't do it, but it is something I am thinking about
exploring one day.

~~~
notfoss
> Surprisingly a couple of times, I was asked about recognizing birds by their
> singing. The library can't do it, but it is something I am thinking about
> exploring one day.

Hopefully, it'll be easier than this:
[https://xkcd.com/1425/](https://xkcd.com/1425/)

------
svjatoslav
I asked Richard Stallman this question: His answer was: Live cheaply.

Eric S. Raymond answer was: Be independently wealthy.

I have tried to reach billionaire philanthropists (Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak,
Dean Kamen, Warren Buffet, and others) with the idea that there are very
talented people around who have brilliant ideas (say for instance another
Newton or Mozart) but are not financially independent to afford to work on
those. Among good places to look for such talent is to identify and support
important or promising open source projects and people behind them. But none
of them bothered to respond.

~~~
Accujack
Are you surprised they didn't respond?

Your solution to this problem seems to be focused on what other people can do
to make things easier for you and others like you, but that's not how humanity
works.

You're ignoring that your request is unreasonable because you're taking the
easy way out - looking for a source of money and convincing yourself that your
efforts deserve it because it's easier than doing the work yourself.

Stallman is right. Live cheaply. If you prefer, work full time at a well paid
job and use your own money to support open source development. The rich aren't
obligated to hand you money because you believe you're doing the right thing.

~~~
antocv
> The rich aren't obligated to hand you money

> use your own money to support open s...

Why should he feel obligated to support others?

~~~
Accujack
He seems to think other people should support him doing open source work, is
this not the same thing?

------
h91wka
Our company lets us work on opensource libraries in work time. How did this
happen: we pushed management to allow opening some of internal code under
premise that "someone else will do the same job, opensource it (since it's
platform-level stuff that has nothing to do with business), their
implementation will become a de-facto standard, and we'll have to rewrite our
internal stuff to match the industry standard". That ultimately worked.

~~~
kevsim
Wow, I've tried a number of tactics but this didn't occur to me. Did you
manage to gain some traction for your projects? Have your teammates found the
time they need to work on open source stuff in reality or does it go out the
window when deadlines loom?

------
etimberg
I've been maintaining Chart.js [0] since 2014. I only work on it during my
free time (evenings and weekends) to avoid any problems with my day job.

Conflict with my day job is also one of the reasons why I don't take
donations. There is some benefit to that though because it allows me to take a
day/week/month off if I need it without feeling guilty. Once there is money
involved, there are a lot more expectations and I think I would have a harder
time putting it down.

0:
[https://github.com/chartjs/Chart.js/](https://github.com/chartjs/Chart.js/)

~~~
XCSme
Thanks for creating Chart.js, I use it in my analytics app[0] to display
graphs, I didn't find any better alternative yet.

[0]: [https://usertrack.net/](https://usertrack.net/)

~~~
erezsh
Looks nice. Have you considered creating a free-tier for open-source projects?

~~~
XCSme
Thank you! I did consider offering a free tier, the problem is that the script
is self-hosted and I probably still have to provide support for the free
users, which I can't (as I'm the only one working on the project currently). I
do plan to create a free-tier or even open-source the project once I find a
sustainable way to do it.

------
feross
Sustainability is another way to say subsistence. The dirty secret of open
source is that much of it is powered by maintainer guilt.

If you’re looking to make money, I don’t recommend you get into open source. I
wish this weren’t the case, but this is the current situation.

Unfortunately, it seems the best path if you want to do open source as a
career is to do enough open source to get your name out there and then
leverage that into a job offer at some megacorp. Maybe you’ll be able to get a
role doing open source, but that’s rare. Hopefully you can continue to do open
source in your free time at least.

That said, if you insist your goal is to get paid doing open source full-time,
here are my tips:

1\. Create a project that is end-user facing. No one is aware of which
transitive dependencies they are using, so no matter how useful your software,
you’ll struggle to get donations, sponsors, or consulting work unless the end
user knows your name. Reliable, error-free transitive dependencies are
invisible. Therefore, the maintainers are invisible, too. And, the better
these maintainers do their job, the more invisible they are. No one ever
visits a GitHub repository for a transitive dependency that works perfectly –
there’s no reason to do so. But a developer investigating an error stack trace
might visit the repository if for no other reason than to file an issue. At
least then there’s a small chance they’ll see the maintainer’s plea in the
README. (I wrote more about this here: [https://feross.org/funding-experiment-
recap/](https://feross.org/funding-experiment-recap/))

2\. Make sure it’s something that the enterprise cares about. If you build a
cool P2P project or a new programming language you’re gonna have a tough time.
No matter how useful or innovative the project is. On the other hand, if
you’re making a front end framework or a UI library for React or something
like that, you’ll have a much better shot at getting companies to sponsor your
project.

3\. Don’t be afraid to ask for money. Contact companies that are using your
library and tell them you want them to sponsor your package. One great hack
for finding out who is using your package is to open an issue called “Who is
using this?” and ask for testimonials or offer to put users’ logos or links in
the README under a “Who uses this” section. Lots of developers will out their
companies as users of your package if you do this. This gives you a good list
of companies to initially reach out to. Without tricks like this it’s
impossible to know who’s even using your package. That’s the first to step to
finding sponsors.

~~~
qu83rt
It frustrates me that companies like Microsoft claim to love and embrace open
source these days, but what smaller up and coming projects with independent
developers are they financially supporting? That's the kind of support of open
source I'd like to see from large companies/corporations/enterprises!

~~~
WJW
How would the developers still be independent if they are supported by a big
company? If they use the money in lieu of a day job they become de facto
employed by the company, only with even less job security. If they don't use
the money, why do they need it in the first place?

In fact, from the perspective of the bigco, there seems to be a thriving
ecosystems for leftpad-style packages already even without additional money
pouring in. Why subsidize it to become even bigger?

~~~
Melting_Harps
> How would the developers still be independent if they are supported by a big
> company?

Jack Dorsey has Devs he pays in BTC whose sole job is to contribute to Bitcoin
Core development and nothing else [1], they have no affiliation to his
companies other than that.

Also, he's an investor in LN labs who are technically their own thing led by
Starkbot (Elizabeth Stark) [2].

So, it can and has been done.

Personally speaking, a lot of the 'how would it ever work...' questions that
come up here that are thought to be seemingly impossible to solve have often
been pilot-tested inside the cryptocurrency space to one degree or another, so
if nothing else I hope most of you can find value in that 'us crazy people'
are actually pushing the envelope in the edge-cases of innovation.

For example, because many of us have been proponents of UBI (from various
source points, mind you) from either a pragmatic or an ideological standpoint,
we've tried to see what verifiable widescale UBI deployment (in Iceland) would
entail back in 2014; it failed, as many of us expected it would, but we tested
hypothesis whose data could ultimately be used later to iterate and improve a
system.

1: [https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-jack-dorsey-square-
crypto/](https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-jack-dorsey-square-crypto/)

2:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2020/02/05/j...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2020/02/05/jack-
dorsey-backed-lightning-labs-raises-10-million-to-build-visa-network-for-
bitcoin/#31bd0f3a5ede)

------
ukutaht
I'm working on an open-source web analytics tool over at
[https://github.com/plausible-
insights/plausible](https://github.com/plausible-insights/plausible). It's
currently bringing in $800/mo and growing pretty fast.

The code is all MIT license and we're working to make it easier to self-host.
I make money through providing a hosted version of the product.

It's a similar model to Sentry or Gitlab. Open-source does not have to be
libraries and frameworks, there are good opportunities to build more
traditional SaaS products that can be self-hosted and you can make money by
selling a hosted version.

I understand that not all open-source projects can be funded this way. Once I
can pay my own salary, I'm planning to set aside a percentage of revenue to
fund open-source projects that Plausible itself relies on.

~~~
unixhero
The solution looks great!

One advice: Make it easy to self host. I can see that this is not the case,
perhaps not your focus currently. That will give you hundreds of free testers,
that will provide QA to the solution you're making money creating. It's a
beneficial cycle.

~~~
ukutaht
Absolutely! Sometimes it's hard to balance the open-source aspect with the
business side. I'm burning through my savings right now so the focus has been
to find paying customers.

At the moment I'm supporting some external contributors who are working on the
self-hosted version. If things go well, we should have a first release next
month or so.

------
patrickg
I give away my database publishing software
([https://www.speedata.de/](https://www.speedata.de/)) for free and make a
living with offering services (helping companies producing high quality
product catalogs and datasheets etc. using the software) Its not much, but I
live a happy live.

I spend about 1/2 of the time doing services and 1/2 hacking on the software.
Quite often, customers are paying for new features in the software so it is
paid hacking. Great!

~~~
MrGilbert
Did you start working on your software with this kind of constellation in
mind? Or was it more of a side project that turned into a business?

~~~
patrickg
I started with a closed source software but I opened it shortly after. So I
didn't start with this in my mind, but since I love open source software, I
had the feeling that I should open it and try my luck. I love the idea of the
GNU projet.

------
gitgud
Working enough making money purely from Open-source is difficult to achieve
and usually requires; amazing projects, a good reputation, a big network of
followers.

But there's also some good monetisation strategies:

\- Consulting, at the bottom of your project "Hire the creator"

\- Donations, at the bottom of your project "Donate here"

\- Open-core, have an open-source core and a premium version with more
features (these suck)

\- Sponsorware, Open-source the library after enough people have paid you for
it [1]

The easiest is to create open-source projects in your day job (where needed).
It makes for a better architecture of modular components and plugins and helps
you learn open-source development without the pressure of making money from
it.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/calebporzio/status/1221437814748909571](https://twitter.com/calebporzio/status/1221437814748909571)

~~~
behindsight
> Open-core, have an open-source core and a premium version with more features
> (these suck)

Out of genuine curiosity, are there some egregious examples that merits
_(these suck)_ , or is it more of a blanket statement?

I would love to avoid making those mistakes.

~~~
gitgud
"Open-core sucks" is a blanket statement as the incentives of the business do
not align with the users of the project. And as a result, in my book it's a
red flag for an open-source project, and I can't think of a single project I
like which does this.

The incentive of an "Open-core" business is to convert people to the premium
version of the product.

This has the effect of hindering/restricting development on the _community
/free-version_, as it's vital that the community version needs to be worse
than the premium version.

Almost any monetisation strategy has this effect on open-source though. Say
for example consulting; if you're paid to help users setup/configure your
project, then your incentive is to have people struggle with your project so
they need to pay you for help...

As you can tell I'm a little pessimistic, but in my opinion almost any project
that is open-source and trying to make money off it's users, has incentives
that will negatively impact the project and it's users...

Hope this helps, I'm still open to projects which have any of these
monetisation strategies, but they have to be of _much, much_ higher quality
for me to seriously consider.

~~~
erinaceousjones
I think open-core can work well, when done right - as long as you're not
necessarily crippling your FOSS offering compared to the paid version(s). When
the code is likely to be used by other businesses, for example. There's
generally a trade-off between time and price: use the open core, develop your
own additions to add in the extra functionality you want -- or buy a license
and use the "premium" features.

I can see there's a whole ecosystem built up around kubernetes, cloud
management and microservice meshes, for example. You can set it all up for
free using the FOSS offerings but it will sink a lot of time learning how to
and maintaining the stack. Or you can pay to use someone elses "batteries
included" distro which can be deployed with a few commands and save yourself a
lot of time but spend $$$($..$??).

As long as projects don't actively refuse to accept contributions to the core,
respond well to issues, document stuff well and keep a nice pluggable
architecture allowing other people to fork it and hack in their own features,
you're allowing people to choose between time or money.

Benefits of having a "pro" version also filters down to the open core - if
you're wanting to market your product to businesses, you're likely going to
spend more effort on making it more user-friendly and therefore documentation
and howto guides become more slick and comprehensive.

~~~
GordonS
I also think it can work well.

TimescaleDB is a good example - everything is open, but _most_ is open source.
The only parts that you need a commercial license for are "obviously"
enterprise/scale features.

I use TimescaleDB in my ISV, and think it's a fantastic tool. Should I ever
need the enterprise features, I would gladly pay for them and fund maintenance
and growth of a tool I love.

------
onion2k
_But the question is how do you sustain yourself while working fulltime on
building /maintaining open source software._

I'd estimate that at least 99.9% of open source software is written by people
without direct payment eg for every 1 paid contributor there are 999 who do it
either as part of their role in a job or for free. Even the paid contributors
mostly have other income from consulting, social media, speaking, etc.

That's not to say you can't make a job out of it, but actually planning to do
that would be incredibly hard. You'd need to recognise something that's
missing from the software ecosystem, implement it, release it, and find enough
people willing to pay you to develop it to make it a full time job.
Alternatively, find a role at a company that pays people to work on open
source, eg Google, Facebook, Canonical, etc. Arguably that's going to end up
feeling like a normal developer job though.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
> I'd estimate that at least 99.9% of open source software is written by
> people without direct payment

If we include all software released under an Open Source licence, I imagine
that's true, but it will include millions of trivial GitHub projects that
don't really matter.

It may be that only 0.1% of FOSS development is paid, going by lines-of-code,
but far more than 0.1% of the _value_ of FOSS is done by paid developers.
Plenty of paid Linux kernel devs, for instance.

~~~
onion2k
_Plenty of paid Linux kernel devs, for instance._

There's loads who work on the kernel _as part of their job_ , but that's no
different to any other dev job. I think the question "how do I get paid to
work on open source?" is subtly but very importantly different to "how do I
get a job that includes working on open source?". The former implies the
person asking wants to get paid directly to work on an open project in their
own right rather than being part of a company's team of contributors.

That might not be the case here but it's how I've interpreted it, because "how
do I get a job at a company that contributors to open source?" isn't very
interesting. You find an opening at a company that works on open projects and
apply for it.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
> There's loads who work on the kernel as part of their job, but that's no
> different to any other dev job.

What's the problem with that? It's win-win that this arrangement is relatively
common.

> I think the question "how do I get paid to work on open source?" is subtly
> but very importantly different to "how do I get a job that includes working
> on open source?". The former implies the person asking wants to get paid
> directly to work on an open project in their own right rather than being
> part of a company's team of contributors.

You're right to point out the distinction, but I don't think _how do I get
paid to work on open source_ should necessarily be taken to have that meaning.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
The problem is, for the most part, that the dev will only get paid to work on
aspects that advances the employing corporation's interests. It really is just
a job.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
> It really is just a job.

I'm not seeing the problem with that. You'll never have _full_ freedom to work
on whatever you like and get paid for it.

Seems to me the salaried job approach will give the developer less freedom
compared to the patronage model, as you say, but it also has advantages. It
introduces corporate/organisational resources, so you won't have to personally
fund your test server, and hopefully there will be competent management, etc.
In practice I imagine it means better job security too, and at the risk of
being circular, it's just more likely to happen and to pay you properly.

> the dev will only get paid to work on aspects that advances the employing
> corporation's interests

True, but compared to the work just never happening, that's still a good
thing.

If you instead rely on patrons, you're still beholden to someone else's
interests. This takes us back to my first point: you can never have total
freedom to work on what you want, and get paid for it.

------
superasn
Depends on how popular your project is.

1\. Evan you (creator of vuejs) makes kind of a salary via patreon [1].

2\. Taylor otwell (creator of laravel) has created many useful projects like
spark and forge that generate amazing revenue.

3\. Creator of sidekiq (mike) has created a million dollar business by
creating premium upsells [2]

4\. And finally of course there are free and hosted versions of the software
like WordPress that are in a league of their own (also recently noticed a site
called Browserless which has done quite well with this model)

[1] [https://blog.patreon.com/vue-js-creator-evan-
you](https://blog.patreon.com/vue-js-creator-evan-you)

[2] [https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/016-mike-perham-of-
side...](https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/016-mike-perham-of-sidekiq)

~~~
langitbiru
5\. Dan Abramov
([https://twitter.com/dan_abramov](https://twitter.com/dan_abramov)) is
sponsored by FB to work on React. The case is similar to Victor Stinner
([https://github.com/vstinner](https://github.com/vstinner)). He is paid by
RedHat to work on Python.

6\. Kyle Matthews works on Gatsby by VC's money. The business model is premium
cloud service for incremental build.

------
mperham
I wrote sidekiq.org starting 8 years ago and blogged about my experiences over
time, e.g.

[https://www.mikeperham.com/2012/08/26/the-sidekiq-
experiment...](https://www.mikeperham.com/2012/08/26/the-sidekiq-experiment-
part-i/)

I sell closed source Pro and Enterprise focused feature packs for my OSS
projects. This is known as "open core".

My first full year in 2013 I sold $85k.

I'm in the millions ARR now.

~~~
mrskitch
I pretty much stole Mike's business model, and peppered in some cloud-y saas
for browserles.io. I'm almost done with year 3, and will hopefully hit 500kARR
this year.

Mike's story was a lot of inspiration for me, and I think licensing + cloud-
ifying your opensource projects are a ton more viable than hoping for Patreaon
or other platforms to pay you. Self-bootstrapped indiehacker style was great
for me, but it does require a lot of up-front time and commitment in seeing it
through. Upside is that it's not monopoly money being dealt with, and
everything is on your terms.

~~~
mperham
Wow, that's right on track with my growth. Congrats man, you'll be in the
millions soon enough.

------
multimedial
I would like to interject here that many companies are specifically looking or
requiring software devs to work or to have worked on „open source“ projects.

What strikes me as odd is that it is usually been brought up as some sort of
additional qualification (as in „open source projects promote good code“), but
in reality what this boils down for you is just more potential work (your
normal work + open source work), and also implies lowered expectations for
salary please („you are doing coding in your free time anyways!“).

Seriously, I admire and respect open source developers, but fuck companies
that make it mandatory to have worked on an open source project for hiring
you.

That is seriously fucked up - companies that rake in tons of money, build on
top of free software products, make it mandatory for their developers to
provide proof that they can be further eploited (as that is what it comes down
to - forget that „better code quality“ or „we are part of the community“ thing
they usually use as the rationale).

Sorry, had to vent that.

And to OP: I was asking myself the same question (how to sustain oneself in a
first world country by doing unpaid coding). I came to the conclusion that
this is not possible for me, as I strive for a higher standard of living as
well as some spare time.

To put it more bluntly: open source developers seem to be the monks or junkies
of coding to me in that they are just fueling their desire to code but do not
insist on getting renumerated for it. I am not saying you shouldn‘t be doing
any pro bono work, but a high quality product like VLC for instance should be
able to sustain properly paid developers.

~~~
zozbot234
> but fuck companies that make it mandatory to have worked on an open source
> project for hiring you.

Why? Open source coding is essentially pro-bono work, that's required by
professional ethics in many fields. If we want to be regarded as valued
professionals, there are some obligations to the general public that come with
that.

For that matter, most developers are not being paid to work on the likes of
VLC or some other COTS, where "should this be open source" is even a
meaningful question. They're developing or maintaining some internal
enterprise app, so any source code they develop will always be available to
the final user in that basic sense.

~~~
rebelrexx858
Pro-bono work is generally done on the clock. Open source work (where I've
worked at least) is expected during personal time. That's the major difference
from my experience.

------
orlandohill
If you want to work full-time on open source, then you need to treat it like a
job. Either find an employer who will pay you, or start a business and become
your own employer.

One way to start an open source business is to use a public/private licensing
model, a.k.a. dual licensing with an 'open' license and a commercial license.
The key is that you can have readable, modifiable, redistributable source
code, without universally giving your work away for free. Instead, charge a
fee for the right to use your software to create proprietary software, or for
the right to use your software in a commercial context.

License Zero is designed to support developers pursuing this kind of business
model. There are two public licenses, Parity and Prosperity, and there's a
payment platform to charge for private licenses.
[https://licensezero.com/](https://licensezero.com/)

Parity is a copy-left license, and is best suited to developer tools and
software libraries. [https://paritylicense.com/](https://paritylicense.com/)

Prosperity is a non-commercial license, and is best suited to end-user
applications. [https://prosperitylicense.com/](https://prosperitylicense.com/)

The Sustain podcast has an interview with the creator of License Zero, Kyle
Mitchell. [https://sustain.codefund.fm/29](https://sustain.codefund.fm/29)

~~~
Freso
I don’t see any of those licenses listed on
[https://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical](https://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical)
and it took me a bunch of digging in the license-review mailing list archives
to find when it was submitted for consideration (most recently anyway, sounds
like it was submitted previously too):
[https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-
review_lists....](https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-
review_lists.opensource.org/2017-September/003091.html)

The consensus on that list is that License Zero violates certain tenets of the
Open Source principles, and as such software released under a License Zero
license is not open source software. By extension, this means that getting to
work full time on License Zero software means that you’re not working full
time on open source software.

~~~
orlandohill
I don't care about other people's definitions of the term open source. To me,
software is open if I can read the source, modify the source, and redistribute
modified or unmodified copies. If I have to pay to use it when creating
proprietary software, or within a commercial context, then so be it. It makes
sense that the people most closely deriving financial benefit from a piece of
software should be the ones to fund its continued development and maintenance.

The FSF's concept of four freedoms always appealed to me, but the problem is
that freedom 0 allows people to take away the freedom of others, because it
allows the creation of proprietary software. The Parity Public License doesn't
have that hypocrisy. [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-
sw.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html)

------
excid3
I tweeted about my first $1k/mo GitHub sponsor recently.
[https://twitter.com/excid3/status/1250428994303885313](https://twitter.com/excid3/status/1250428994303885313)

A lot of the sponsors that do well are ones that offer things that the sponsor
wants. Trading a couple hours a month consulting for $1k/mo in sponsorship
helps make it worth doing to the donors. They want to support you, but they
also probably could use your help.

Effectively you're productizing consulting and that flips it from a donation
to a purchase. They get a tangible thing for their money this way. I think
that helps a lot for making sponsorships more successful.

~~~
bullen
If you only have 9 sponsors that probably means few (one) of them is paying
for 99% which means you might not be able to rely on that income?

------
ununoctium87
I’m responsible for a few repos, probably the most famous one being
github.com/stretchr/testify.

My solution is that as much as I love open source and the community I’m in, I
do not let it get in the way of work and family.

I’ll only contribute when I have spare time. Unless I were to be paid for it.

~~~
jackwade86
As someone who uses testify at work and at home on personal projects, I just
want to say Thanks for a great tool.

~~~
ununoctium87
Happy to help :)

------
Accujack
Why do you want to get into open source? Is it because you support the
philosophy of open source?

Is it because you don't like your present job and want to work at a better
one, and it seems like open source work would be more pleasant?

People who can make a living doing open source are rare, you have better
chances of winning the lottery than making a non poverty living writing open
source code unless you can make yourself a super star.

The only solid way to do it is code, code code. Write software people will
use, that not only works well but which has quality source code. Share it,
support it, work with others to make the software even better.

Write something people need that is otherwise very expensive, like a CAD
package for a specific need, or something that is a niche no one has addressed
yet with really high quality software.

Note that the above relate to software you create.

If you just want to work maintaining open source software, you can get a job
working with it somewhere that uses it extensively... not too hard these days,
lots of places that make set top boxes or embedded devices use Linux, Android
is still partly Linux.

If you're thinking of making a living by writing open source software but you
haven't already written a well liked open source package.... I suggest you
adjust your expectations.

------
tacurran
OSS gives me a chance to work with people I like, to learn, and to contribute
to some great software projects. Most of what I do these days is either
building or using OSS. Last year I quit my job to do OSS full time with a few
friends. Since most big companies see OSS as „free“, it’s not simple to make a
living from OSS only. OSS is creative like art. Somehow we need to think
differently about compensating indie OSS projects (code, docs, examples,
analytics, slack, community, and cloud services) for their work. Free is not
so easy. GitHub offers people a way to contribute and there are other ways to
donate. It’s usually not enough. We also do some commercial support, and that
pays a little. But it’s difficult to get a regular revenue stream. Especially
with cloud it’s time to rethink how OSS „works“ for the makers. Maybe there
are ways to keep open, and still have some minimum level of money from
commercial uses especially from established cloud companies? Still, I love
doing OSS and working with so many others that share the same feeling.

------
simias
Basically your only options to get paid to write free software is either to
work for a company that develops it (say, Mozilla or Red Hat for instance),
create your own company and make your software open or manage to get
donors/sponsors (by far the hardest and less reliable method since it can come
and go very quickly).

Getting paid for open source software is like becoming a successful musician,
from the outside it's easy to only see the few "superstars" who make bank but
for every one of them you have thousands of people for whom it'll never be
their main source of income.

~~~
rhn_mk1
The first path is the only way I ever got hard cash for open source. There are
plenty companies that create only or mostly open source work in addition to
the 2 mentioned: Igalia, Linaro, Collabora, Intel, AMD, Endless, SuSE, to name
a few. Some scientific research is happening in the open source manner as
well.

While none of my stuff made outside a contract ever yielded money, I also
never made it a goal.

------
madoublet
I recently shutdown my open source project (respondcms.com). I spent over 5
years building it and was able to scrape some revenue out of support
contracts, installations, and theme sales (~$100-300 /month). But, I never got
to the point where it was sustainable. I do think that it helped me a lot in
my 9-5 job as I was constantly solving problems and developing new skills. It
also gave me a unique skillset that I used to development a new product called
Profit Pages ([https://profitpages.io/](https://profitpages.io/)). In terms of
tips to turn it into a full-time career, I would recommend (1) open source
libraries, not complete products, (2) keep it small and sell the parts that
make it complicated, (3) do not sell customizations (anything that does not
scale past 1 person), (4) have a revenue plan from day one.

------
gwbas1c
From looking at the comments here, it looks like it's very hard to make a
living with a large open source project, especially if that project is an end-
user application.

Most of the open-source code that I use are small, limited-scope libraries.
These appear to come from someone who wrote the library as part of a larger
project; and usually from someone experienced enough to make the library
"good."

Usually the limited-scope libraries solve a well-defined common problem that
many applications need; instead of a unique tool that someone just wants to
give away for free.

Alternatively, there's frameworks like Spring that come from consulting
companies. These frameworks only become valuable with lots of external users,
so it's in Pivitol's best interests to sponsor their framework, which they
also happen to be very good at using to write custom applications for paying
customers.

------
cbanek
I work at the Rubin Observatory and we're big into open source. We're
thankfully highly encouraged to submit upstream, and we use lots of open
source projects and try to fix them where we can.

I don't know how to turn it into a fulltime career other than getting some
kind of grant or working with a company to do it. Sponsorship sounds great,
but probably requires some fame / traction, which is probably the hardest
part, since you need the money to get the traction. Some open source projects
also have foundations with employees or people doing contracts, like astropy
(also driven with donations).

------
thibaut_barrere
In my case, it is not completely full-time, but a decent portion of my time.

The "trick" in my case is that I am an independent consultant, and open-source
is how I dedicate some days of my workload (and a bit of weekends too, but
only when I want it).

I have published an open-source Ruby data processing framework in 2015
([https://www.kiba-etl.org](https://www.kiba-etl.org)).

I sustain myself by two ways: 1/ consulting on either Kiba ETL (which brings
leads) or other data projects and 2/ "Kiba Pro" commercial extensions
providing more features with vendor support (yes, proprietary code, not OSS,
on that specific part).

I have explained in depth how and why I decided to go that route in a talk
this year:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv1EnYTXIeA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv1EnYTXIeA)

About GitHub Sponsors: I'm giving it some thoughts, but some parts are blurry
for me as a French company, lawyers have no answers yet, and GH support could
not help me from a legal/fiscal standpoint here. I also do not expect much,
but will likely try it out.

Hope this helps, although this road is not for everyone!

------
franciscop
I was offered a donation once. It turned out to be some kind of scammy new
crypto coin that someone was trying to push. That was a very sad low. Besides
that, I got a $10 donation of real money once. I treat open source as just a
hobby, I'd love for it to be something more but analyzing the situation it's
not very realistic.

Read this amazing article on how much money Open Source makes:
[https://staltz.com/software-below-the-poverty-
line.html](https://staltz.com/software-below-the-poverty-line.html)

The best funded JS open source project, Vue.js, receives $16k/month[1]. That's
a single-developer level of income in SV. The fact that TechCrunch, who
regularly covers multi-million deals and CEOs making millions, says that "the
revenues can be outsized" with these numbers is ingenuous at best:
[https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/23/open-source-
sustainability...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/23/open-source-
sustainability/)

So you have few realistic options:

\- Save enough money to not need to work again (FIRE - Financial Independence,
Retire Early, etc).

\- Live very cheap, which could be a flip side of FIRE. Be ready to move to
Thailand and other cheap countries.

\- Work on open source on the weekends or after work. Alternate working N
months/years and then doing OSS M years.

\- Do consulting as a part time job and open source. If you play your cards
right you might be able to join both consulting and OSS somehow.

\- Find the companies that do open source and apply for jobs there. Not so
many options, but it's realistic.

------
evmar
I have been able to write some free software as part of my paying job. For
some companies this is a real strategy, that is explained by companies
commoditizing their complements [1].

[1] [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-
letter-v/](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/)

------
jondubois
My open source project is SocketCluster. A real-time WebSocket library focused
on scalability: [https://socketcluster.io/](https://socketcluster.io/)

It has 2 steady income streams:

1\. Monthly sponsorship donations.

2\. Forging rewards from the Lisk blockchain. Those rewards are shared with
the community.

SocketCluster powers Lisk's P2P network and protocol so on that basis I was
voted into a forging position on the Lisk blockchain.

These two sources of income have been just enough to support myself and a
couple of casual contributors. Took 7 years to get to this point.

Also, I occasionally did consulting in the past but that has not been
reliable.

My experience makes me optimistic about blockchain tech's ability to help
monetize open source projects. I'm particularly optimistic about the DPoS
(Delegated Proof of Stake) mechanism because it allows big token holders to
vote for open source project maintainers to be delegates on their blockchain
and allows those open source maintainers to earn block rewards.

Forging on DPoS is like like Bitcoin mining, but a lot less hassle and
requires no capital if you can get the votes. I'm working on the Lisk
ecosystem now.

Helping others to monetize their open source projects in such a way that they
can retain independence from corporate or government influence is my life's
mission. My project is just a proof of concept.

BTW feel free to look for my email address on GitHub and get in touch with me
if you want to participate somehow. I can't guarantee anything but I feel that
the technology and incentives are improving - I'm working on a DEX ecosystem
right now which should facilitate this.

------
cddotdotslash
I am the author of an open source cloud security tool
([https://github.com/cloudsploit/scans](https://github.com/cloudsploit/scans)).
We also sold a hosted version, which wound up becoming fairly popular and
bringing in decent money. Last year, the team and product were acquired.

There are numerous benefits to being open source. We built a community around
the product, it played into marketing efforts, really helped attract
developers at companies for bottom-up sales, and led to lots of improvements,
many of them contributed by our paying users.

My point is that open source and "making money" don't need to be mutually
exclusive. In fact, sometimes the open source side can really bolster the
commercial side. This seems most effective at companies that offer a hosted
version of their open source product. Very few large enterprises want to run
things themselves if they can just pay a company to run it for them or provide
support.

------
gfmio
I have a day job. Right now, I do open source purely on the side, but if I was
to get enough donations/sponsors or I got paid for doing open source work, I’d
happily start doing it full-time. I do sometimes contribute to open source
during my paid work, but that’s more an exception than a rule.

------
Kovah
I too have a day job and develop open software as a hobby. I don't think that
I could ever make as much money out of it like my real job, because I don't
have any popular projects out there. And... To be honest.. I don't really want
to make my hobby a business.

------
rsp1984
Just do something that the enterprise world cares about. Remember Segment [1],
one of YC's most successful companies, started out as a small open source tool
on Github [2]. But even though it was small and had basically no features, the
enterprise loved it and asked for more. That's how they realized that they hit
a nerve.

So writing and releasing OSS may not lead to direct monetization
opportunities, but it can be a great way to get in touch with enterprises and
to get demand readings quickly.

[1] [https://segment.com/](https://segment.com/) [2]
[https://github.com/segmentio/analytics.js](https://github.com/segmentio/analytics.js)

------
angt
For me, open source is a matter of passion. If you like programming and you do
it on your free time, at some point, you end up with a more or less showable
software that is useful to you. Of course you will share it with others,
thinking that maybe it will be useful to someone else.

Working to make money is a completely different story, and it's quite rare to
be able to completely merge work and passions.

There are also plenty of reasons for a company to publish open source software
(and that's a good thing!). But you have to remember that behind this choice,
there will always be a strategic reason with a business plan.

------
gwd
> What are some tips to get into open source and turn it into fulltime career

I feel like you could replace "open source" with "programming" and it would be
basically the same question.

There are two sides to working a successful business:

1) Having something of value people want

2) Figuring out how to 'capture' that value in a sustainable way

The vast majority of people either aren't very good at, or don't really enjoy,
#2, and so they outsource the "how to make money off this" to a company (i.e.,
they work for a company). You write the software the company asks you to, and
the company figures out how to make money from it.

The same thing goes for open source: Probably the dead easiest way to make
money from open source is to apply for a job at RedHat. Or SUSE, or Ubuntu. Or
one of the teams at Twitter or Facebook or Google that do open source. You get
to work on open-source software, and the company gets to figure out how to
capture value from the activity.

Alternately, you could work for yourself, but then you have to figure out how
to capture that value yourself. There are lots of creative ways to do that,
but you have to figure out your own market. And in the end, if you're
successful, you'll probably have more demand than you can satisfy all by
yourself, so you'll need to hire other people, in which case other developers
will be outsourcing the "figure out how to capture value" thing to you.

Or, it can just be your hobby, and you can treat it as such: do it insofar as
it's fun for you, and don't worry about anything else.

Me myself, I'm a developer paid full-time to work on open source software.

I also have a handful of hobby projects I've worked on in my spare time, which
I've put up on github with an open license. Those are things I would be doing
for my own purpose anyway; might as well let someone else use them if they
want. But I'm never expecting them to become a big thing, and if they did I
certainly wouldn't spend much time working on them unless I decided to try to
take a jump and figure out how to make it pay.

------
enitihas
I think most open source workers survive on their jobs only. Whether working
for a Megacorp or a smaller company. HN loves to say people can earn via
patreon, but I think you can count on one hand the number of developers
earning anything reasonable via Patreon. Most developer's Patreon accounts
receive peanuts. The ones that do get good money are in charge of very famous
projects, and spend a huge amount of time marketing their project, and you can
find sponsor links everywhere.

Open source is very hard to monetize (yeah, RedHat, but that is not similar to
most open source projects.

------
open-source-ux
You might be able to make money by providing customised solutions to your
clients using open source software.

If your open source product can be run as a SaaS, you might be able to make
money by providing no-hassle hosting (think Ghost or WordPress).

Another option might be providing a open source core and then selling
additional closed-source features (e.g. GitLab)

But if you simply want to sell your open source product to customers so they
can run it themselves, then it's impossible. It's a dream for many developers
and there are some success stories, but they are always the _exception not the
norm_.

Solutions like selling support, or even worse, charging for documention, are
simply unappealing to both developers and users.

There is another option - one that some open source advocates dislike: source-
only products i.e. you sell you software product to customers to run them
themselves. You give them the source code of your product so they can
customise it to meet their needs. But the software is not open source and
cannot be shared the way open source can.

There are actually lots of successful source-only products that are sustaining
their creators full-time. Two examples: Craft CMS and Kirby CMS - both publish
their source code on GitHub and rely on the honesty of their customers to pay
(which they do). They have a thriving community of developers making plugins
and extensions - proving that you can create a community of developers around
a 'source-only' product.

------
_alexander_
This is a really tricky question, I am helping several open source projects
with a huge number of stars and downloads. I did more than 500 PRs and most of
them in popular projects. And I have to say a not popular phrase - in most
cases, OSS is not a story about big money. Even more, it is really hard to
replace a full-time job by working on OSS. After almost 3 years involving in
OOS, I noticed the following things:

1\. In most cases, the popular OOS project has a team in some large companies,
for instance, React (Facebook), Angular (Google), VSCode (Microsoft), etc. and
that's mean that code is open-sourced however a key decision made by an
internal team.

2\. A donation can help you to buy a cup of coffee (or tea), however, not
replace your full-time job.

3\. If we are talking about Github sponsors, the idea is really good, however,
if you are located in one of the following countries
[https://github.com/sponsors#countries](https://github.com/sponsors#countries),
which is not my case, and I think my country won't be supported in near
future.

4\. To be involved in OSS is not guarantee tons of interesting job offers. In
most cases, a good LinkedIn profile can be much helpful than good Github
profile, and yes - to have good Github profile need to make something
important every day that others can see your involvement, which takes more
your spare time instead of adding several motivation phrases to LinkedIn
profile for HRs.

5\. OSS is a community and that's mean an opportunity to meet some interesting
people.

------
bzg
I have been a free maintainer for the last 10 years and I find this topic
quite fascinating.

I have gathered links about it here: [https://bzg.github.io/opensource-
challenges](https://bzg.github.io/opensource-challenges)

Oh, and you can support my FLOSS contributions through Github:
[https://github.com/sponsors/bzg](https://github.com/sponsors/bzg)

------
karterk
I've been working on Typesense
([https://github.com/typesense/typesense](https://github.com/typesense/typesense))
a developer-friendly typo-tolerant search engine that has found some love
recently.

While my work is currently done outside my core working hours, I've been
exploring if it is possible to make it self-sustainable and have been reading
about a few other people who have been successful at this. I think the trick
is to make it possible for people to pay you in one or more ways:

a) Don't ask for donations, but offer a support contract. It's easier for devs
to get that approved.

b) Offer a hosted version at a reasonable price. Sell the convenience -- of
course, this might not be feasible if your open source tool is not easy to
offer as a hosted service.

c) Offer some premium features as a paid product. Companies are again happy to
purchase a premium version if the pricing is not ridiculous (e.g. $500/year
will be a no-brainer) and you can also throw in additional support.

d) Get a company to sponsor a feature if it is something that they badly want.

e) Charge for adding a company's logo in the Github repository as a less
intrusive form of advertising.

f) Use your open source code and popularity to get a better paying job with
work-life balance. Indirect monetization but hey, that's pretty legit.

g) Find a company that allows you to work on an open source project full time.
Not too many companies do it but if your interests/strengths overlap with a
project (e.g. Kubernetes) that you contribute to, this could be an option.

~~~
orlandohill
h) License under the Parity Public License, and offer paid private licenses to
companies that don't want to open source their code.
[https://paritylicense.com/](https://paritylicense.com/)
[https://licensezero.com/](https://licensezero.com/)

------
floss_fulltimer
I've been working full-time on different FLOSS projects.

Most of the time the only viable option is to work for an organization (either
as an employee or not).

Don't go for FAANGs. There are other orgs and companies out there.

Asking random users for donations works on very few cases.

It's a sad state of things. Most modern technologies have been researched with
public funding (semiconductors, fiber optics, GSM, GPS, touchscreens) but now
people don't even remember that.

------
akulkarni
We (TimescaleDB) spent a lot of time analyzing a variety of open-source
business models, before deciding the one for us.

In case it is helpful, here are the results of our study:
[https://blog.timescale.com/blog/how-open-source-software-
mak...](https://blog.timescale.com/blog/how-open-source-software-makes-money-
time-series-database-f3e4be409467/)

------
zabil
I work full time building open source products. My company is kind enough to
sponsor me and my team. We work on a lot of other projects (many of them using
our open source work) so the revenue comes from elsewhere. If you just want to
focus on building open source software and not worry too much about the
business side of things. I recommend working for companies where who embrace
this culture.

------
marijn
I've started communicating a clear expectation
([https://prosemirror.net/#about](https://prosemirror.net/#about)) that
profitable users help support my software. Of course, most still won't, but
some do, and with a big enough user base those contributions, plus some
consulting around the projects, provides a decent income.

------
p0nce
I made a few libraries while I was employed. After, built a company and made
money with closed-source products. I'm still doing open-source libraries. Open
source never made me any single dollar. A nice thing is the one library that
succeeded, it brought a kind community with some shared interests, and
significant contribution. This kind of RoI is hard to quantify.

------
hyperpallium
Dual licensing: for an open source library that some businesses will want to
distribute with their closed source product, use GPL 2 which doesn't allow
that. Then businesses will pay for a commerical license from you that does
allow it.

It doesn't affect open source users; though Stallman doesn't like it. Projects
using this kind of idea are berkleyDB and ghostscript.

------
autarch
Many years ago I created some very widely used libraries in the Perl
ecosystem, DateTime.pm (first release in 2003, 3,774 transitive dependents,
[https://metacpan.org/release/DateTime](https://metacpan.org/release/DateTime))
and Log::Dispatch (first release in 1999, 1,043 transitive,
[https://metacpan.org/release/Log-Dispatch](https://metacpan.org/release/Log-
Dispatch)). I've also created or contributed to dozens of other packages in
the Perl ecosystem, some of them very widely used, including at places like
Amazon (to this day).

During Perl's peak in the early 2000's, I'd guess there were easily dozens
(hundreds? thousands?) of companies using code I'd created. Some of the bigger
Perl companies these days include Craigslist, Booking.com, CPanel, Bluehost,
and Grant Street Group. Many of these companies have been around for quite a
long time.

Starting in 2008 I began adding a DONATIONS section to my package
documentation, like
[https://metacpan.org/pod/DateTime#DONATIONS](https://metacpan.org/pod/DateTime#DONATIONS).
Over time, I've added this to nearly everything I maintain.

Unfortunately PayPal doesn't provide stats going back to 2008, but at a best
guess I'd say I've received about $2,000-5,000 dollars over 12 years or so.
The largest donation I ever received was $500. Most donations are in the $1-50
range. None of the companies I mentioned above have ever donated anything,
though they have all contributed to The Perl Foundation in the form of
conference sponsorship.

So that's a long-winded way of saying that I don't sustain myself on open
source. This is a pretty common story. Companies rarely make an effort to
support individual developers. They will support language/project foundations,
but that money isn't going to be directly divvied up among library developers
for the language.

~~~
themmes
> So that's a long-winded way of saying that I don't sustain myself on open
> source. This is a pretty common story. Companies rarely make an effort to
> support individual developers. They will support language/project
> foundations, but that money isn't going to be directly divvied up among
> library developers for the language.

Thats interesting, is anyone aware of a language/software community where that
does happen?

~~~
autarch
To clarify a bit, what happens with Perl is that The Perl Foundation funds the
community in various ways. I'm a TPF board member, so I have a pretty good
idea of what we do.

We fund a number of long-running grants for the Perl 5 and Rakudo/MoarVM
language cores. We also have a smaller grants program for one-off projects,
which have included things like documentation work for core & libraries,
funding of work on existing libraries, and infrastructure projects for the
community (websites, etc.).

We also work on marketing the languages by doing things like having a table at
FOSDEM and other conferences, etc. And of course, we provide an organization
to back up conferences and other events, to do things like carry an even
insurance policy, help with Standards of Conduct, and lots of other background
activities.

This is all good stuff, and I'm glad we do it. I don't think we could announce
a plan to just give money to everyone who uploaded to CPAN. For one thing,
that's thousands of people, so we could maybe give them a dollar or ten each.
For another, the value of each person's contribution is obviously hugely
different. I can't see how any community foundation could do this without
causing more problems than it solves, even if the foundation had the funding
to do it at any sort of scale.

------
jmiskovic
I love open source and I would love to get paid for doing it. Yes, I'd say
open source solutions on average have far better quality than proprietary
solutions, and they encourage interoperability between systems. Unfortunately,
I don't have an answer on how to make it a sustainable occupation.

It feels wrong to charge for end product. It means using DRM to block people
who wouldn't pay anyway, from accessing a copy of software that costs me
nothing. I want to be payed for the development effort, not for copy of
product.

There should be a agreement of platform over which developers want to receive
money (for example, Microsoft's GitHub Sponsor might not be the best choice),
followed by strong media push to change the mindset that open source is free
for taking. Most companies can spare the money and in the long run everybody
benefits.

------
fredwu
I've been contributing to open source projects for a decade or so, mostly in
bursts - when I was still 100% hands-on, I'd work on projects that either
interest me, or are used at work (e.g. Rails).

Over the past few years I've mostly been working in leadership (but still with
a bit of hands-on), so I mostly work on things that interest me. For example,
for a while I was obsessed with building a web scraper, and some machine
learning stuff, so I built:

[https://github.com/fredwu/crawler](https://github.com/fredwu/crawler) and
[https://github.com/fredwu/simple_bayes](https://github.com/fredwu/simple_bayes)

Working in bursts works well for me, as I can dial the effort up and down
depending on my availability and mental space.

------
akling
I've been building a new open-source OS[1] (including a web browser) from
scratch and sharing the process on YouTube for a year and a half now.

At the moment I'm supporting myself and my family with a regular 9-5
programming job, but I'm also accepting donations through Patreon, GitHub
Sponsors and PayPal. There's been a huge amount of support coming in,
especially given the ambitious nature of my project, and I'm quite hopeful
that I'll be able to turn this into a full-time gig not too far into the
future.

My tip would be to find ways to share the development process, not just the
software itself. You don't have to make videos like I do, but write about it,
share screenshots, post about it on social media etc. :)

[1] [http://serenityos.org/](http://serenityos.org/)

------
geerlingguy
This year I made it a goal to try to make my OSS work more sustainable. I
still have some steady contract work and a couple side projects that make up
the majority of my income, but I've started devoting regular time to reviewing
code and working on docs and YouTube videos, and so far it's shown some
positive results.

I was getting maybe $10-20/month from Patreon and GitHub Sponsors, but in the
past two months I started asking people directly to support my work if they
could, and to my surprise, a number of people have! I don't know if I'll reach
a 'sustainable' level anytime soon, but if I can, I'll be able to spend more
than a few hours a week on pure OSS work.

------
akerro
>But the question is how do you sustain yourself while working fulltime on
building/maintaining open source software

I sometimes feel opensource collaborative projects only exists thanks to
alcohol, but single-person projects thanks to boredom or scratching itch.

------
felhr
I've created and maintaining an Android library that implements user-space
driver for common USB to serial converters
[https://github.com/felHR85/UsbSerial](https://github.com/felHR85/UsbSerial)
(Nothing fancy compared with what others are posting here but it has been my
little proud).

I estimate that I've earned around 3 - 4 k€ in 6 years because of this project
mostly from: \- Freelancing in projects related. \- Paid version of an Android
app that uses the library \- Free version of the same app with ads \-
Donations

Obviously I have a proper job but I've been able to learn a lot because of
this side project. I would do it again

------
adamzapasnik
Not really an OSS dev, although I'm in the middle of building a library.

I've been looking into the very same question, IMO:

1\. Build a software that you can use as a magnet lead for your services

2\. Build PRO/Enterprise version that you will charge for.

3\. Become a very know individual in your field and get donations (very hard)

4\. Provide services related to the project.

5\. Offer paid version of the project, like Ghost I guess.

6\. Get hired by a company to continue your work.

Personally, I don't think donations work that well. If you are gonna put a
price tag on something, people are gonna pay for it if they need it. Also
worth remembering that most of the projects aren't gonna earn you anything. No
one is gonna donate to you for the nth existing JS lib you crafted.

------
sudhirj
I have a day job, but I'm trying to see if I can make a living off open
source. I'm building a set of libraries, licensing them under the GPL, and
offering to sell LGPL and Apache 2.0 licenses for those who need them (any
commercial use will require either LGPL or Apache 2).

I also found the PolyForm Noncommercial license which, I think is pretty great
for hobbyist use and learning, so I'm trying to sell that license for lunch
money to hobbyists and educators / charities.

Just getting started, will report back on how it goes.

Repo is here
[https://github.com/sudhirj/redimo.go](https://github.com/sudhirj/redimo.go)

~~~
orlandohill
I imagine that most companies would use Redimo on their web servers. In that
case, the GPL wouldn't require them to do anything, so they could always use
the software for free. Even the AGPL wouldn't help much, because it would only
require companies to open source software that directly extends or modifies
Redimo. MongoDB dropped their use of AGPL for exactly that reason.

Have you considered using the Parity Public License and selling private
licenses through License Zero?
[https://paritylicense.com/](https://paritylicense.com/)
[https://licensezero.com/](https://licensezero.com/)

~~~
sudhirj
I did, might still go that route, but Redimo isn’t a web server (although I am
building one that I’m planning to license under Mongo’s SSPL). The code is a
Go / Ruby / JS library that builds with your code, so think the GPL does
apply. As far as I know the LGPL doesn’t trigger if no modifications are made
to the library itself.

Wanted to choose only well known licenses, but I am looking at other options.
LicenseZero works only for individuals, by the way - companies will have to go
through a separate process, or ask all their employees to buy separately.

~~~
_frkl
Two small things: I might have mis-understood you, but you can't sell Apache
licenses for those who need them without those people subsequently having the
right to give away your code under that (open) license to anyone they like.
Which means, if worst comes to worst, you'd sell exactly one license. Also,
there is talk about LicenseZero becoming more flexible in the near future as
to which private licenses are offered to buyers (e.g. company-wide licenses),
so I'd watch that space.

~~~
sudhirj
Thanks for the Apache note, I didn’t realise that. Will pull that option and
replace it with what’s here [https://indieopensource.com/for-
indies](https://indieopensource.com/for-indies)

Indieopensource.com is a pretty great resource. Same author as License Zero.
Was recommended to me when I was asking about company purchases on LicenseZero
- Kyle suggested I charge companies more and use the private license from on
that site. It prevents customers from re-releasing the code under any other
license.

------
laurencerowe
I spent the first 10 years of my career working on and consulting with the
open source CMS Plone. Consulting paid the bills. There were occasional paid
projects for specific improvements to the core software, though mostly that
was done in my own time. Contributing helped build up my skills and reputation
which helped landing consulting contracts.

It was pretty awesome. For most of the time I was able to live somewhere
fairly affordable and earn a comfortable income (though a long way from SV
money.) I still miss that community and meeting up with them at sprints and
conferences around the world.

------
fsloth
Lots of open source software is funded by big established companies (FAANG and
others). People work in those big companies and part of their job description
is to support this or that business critical open source project.

------
pierregillesl
I've been building an open-source assistant for the home for 6 years, it's
called "Gladys Assistant".

I have a paid plan with additional features which allows me to sustain my
cost, and pay myself :)

Being open-source doesn't mean that you can't monetize your work. People are
happy to pay when you develop something great :)

Our website: [https://gladysassistant.com](https://gladysassistant.com) Our
GitHub:
[https://github.com/GladysAssistant/Gladys/](https://github.com/GladysAssistant/Gladys/)

~~~
happppy
Chat is not working. I'm not sure how everything is supposed to work as
nothing happens if I change anything.

------
jedberg
I’d say most of the successful ones get jobs that involve at least part time
work maintaining their project or start a company around it that offers
services and customization.

I know the guy who wrote Jepsen makes enough from consulting to live off of
the consulting.

The guy who wrote haproxy started a company that sells basically haproxy
consulting and custom services.

The guy who wrote Sendmail did the same, and then Sendmail was acquired. The
core maintainers have always done Sendmail as part of their job.

Netflix had a lot of core maintainers of key software on staff who got paid to
work on OSS alongside internal projects.

------
filesystemdude
Easy question: I get a paycheck every other week from my employer, Red Hat,
who pays me and thousands of other people to build, maintain, and support
enterprise open source software.

We're still hiring, by the way.

~~~
literallycancer
Are they still paying peanuts? I'm actually surprised more companies haven't
take advantage by poaching from Red Hat. It's pretty much a free opportunity
to get some decent people on the cheap. And it would still probably be like 2x
bump for most people there. Or more, depending on location.

------
dmortin
There's donation, but I wonder what percent of users actually donate.

Also, what if people donate and there are various contributors to the project
beside the main author(s)? Should they get a piece too?

~~~
bovine3dom
We [1] have received one-off donations from about 1-2% of our users. We get
recurring donations from about 0.2% of our users.

There are some caveats here that probably mean we get more donations than
most: the software is end-user facing, people who use the software generally
use it every day and really like it, the audience skews heavily towards
developers and we invite donations prominently without it being annoying (I
think - no-one has complained so far).

As for deciding where funds go, most projects only have a handful of core
contributors and it's very obvious which these are from how much they
contribute. We just talk about it.

[1]:
[https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl](https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl)

------
entha_saava
See termux app's addons and some simple mobile tools apps for Android. They
have paid versions on play store which are actually open source. But you are
paying for the privilege of getting them on play store instead of compiling
them and loading through adb.

Another way is providing an SaaS version, but having an open core product is
better for this. If memory serves right, wallabag does something like this.

Enterprise support etc: There are quite a few companies that provide support
for software. Red Hat for example.

Bounties: see bountysource

------
gsempe
It’s really complicated for an open source maintainers to be able to focus
100% of the time on the open source project. Patreon, Github sponsor or Open
Collective exist on the sponsoring side. If your community gathers persons who
do the same work you can as well create a job board. I’m doing
[https://roleup.com](https://roleup.com) and it’s the perfect tool in this
case. Ask me anything. I’ll reply with pleasure.

------
ensiferum
I've worked on Newsflash (A usenet binary grabber) for +15 years.
[http://github.com/ensisoft/newsflash-
plus](http://github.com/ensisoft/newsflash-plus)

The software is free to use and the source is available however not with
permissive license. The money I've made when divided by hours of work
approaches $0 per hour rate. But hey, I wrote it for myself mostly.

Anyway.. the answer.. a full time job on the side. :|

------
logane
I'm a computer science PhD student, and I mostly maintain/create open source
projects ([https://github.com/lengstrom/](https://github.com/lengstrom/)) in
the evenings for fun --- its particularly great you're working with friends!

I've never viewed it as a potential full time job. However, I recently got
GitHub sponsors and make about 5$ a month!

------
pomber
I've been working full-time open source for two years. I'm spending my savings
to sustain myself. Not sure what will happen when I run out of money. I
receive around USD 40 of donations per month and use them mostly to pay
servers, domains, and other project's expenses. For reference, my top 3
projects on GitHub have 12k, 5k, and 2.5k stars.

To be clear, I'm not complaining, I think it's worth it.

------
adamwathan
I created Tailwind CSS in 2017 and earlier this year we released Tailwind UI
which is a commercial set of prebuilt HTML components to help support
continued work on the OSS. It’s done about $1.5m in revenue since releasing at
the end of February and now we’re hiring a few more people to help develop
both the commercial product and a lot more OSS work.

------
dimillian
I wish people would sponsor me for my open source SwiftUI applications:
[https://github.com/sponsors/Dimillian/](https://github.com/sponsors/Dimillian/)
Because 4500 stars is nice but sponsoring is good too :D But I have a day job
so it's fine I guess.

------
pabs3
Some resources for that:

[https://www.fossjobs.net/](https://www.fossjobs.net/)
[https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources](https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources)

------
tmikaeld
I'd love to see more core & pro versions of Open source.

Like [https://www.group-office.com/](https://www.group-office.com/)

or [https://www.proxmox.com/en/](https://www.proxmox.com/en/)

That way maintainers give and receive, not only give.

------
verdverm
Side gig with COSS companies

[https://coss.media](https://coss.media)

[https://astronomer.io](https://astronomer.io)

[https://hofstadter.io](https://hofstadter.io)

[https://toptal.com](https://toptal.com)

------
haxorito
Day job. Working during day, doing open source at night and weekends. Until
very recently I didn’t have my own OS projects, but I did contributions to
about 20 others. Now I begin to work on my own stuff and I hope eventually
turn it into sustainable business to support myself doing OS 100% of my time

------
happppy
I have a very small JavaScript library. I'm too embarrassed to share that in
this list of great work. But someone offered me money to add some
modifications in that according to their need. I wasn't able to do that
because I didn't have right tools to test the changes.

------
andyrichardson
Prior to my current job, OSS was just something that I did in my free time and
considered an investment.

My current employer pays me for any OSS I do in my free time which is pretty
cool. We collaboratively maintain OSS projects and are able to actively work
on them when between client contracts.

------
ecesena
Depending on the application/field, one option is to combine it with open
source hardaware. People tend to accept that they have to pay for hardware.

The best would be to combine paid hardward + subscription for software. Does
anyone know any fully open source example of this? I don't.

------
cushychicken
Patrick McKenzie nailed this in a tweet thread a few years ago:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/patio11/status/936629...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/patio11/status/936629310785437696)

~~~
virgilp
> The requested URL /patio11/status/936629310785437696 was not found on this
> server. That’s all we know.

Either use archive.is or the link to the tweet. google cache doesn't really
work.

~~~
pomber
[https://twitter.com/patio11/status/936629310785437696](https://twitter.com/patio11/status/936629310785437696)

------
jasoneckert
I teach information technology and computer science courses. In addition to
providing sustenance, it supports extracurricular open source development
while allowing me the flexibility to choose which open source projects to
contribute to and when.

------
mugsie
Day job, at least somewhat related to my open source work. I have been quite
lucky that most of my employers have supported my open source work, from time
allocated to it during "working hours", to funding conference attendance.

------
smashah
Due to this crisis, I have kinda become full time open source maintainer. The
good thing is a while ago I paywalled some features and monetize new ones - or
more accurately unlock features for donators. The main one I maintain is one
used to automate Whatsapp [0], I manage license keys through Gumroad[1] and
donations through Buy me a coffee[2]. I'm happy with the amount I'm getting
right now but it's definitely not a lot.

One cool thing about doing this is that due to the nature of maintaining a
project like this, I end up being the most competent at building products with
it. This in turn leads to my discord community asking me to build ideas and
I've selected one to build and monetize (still WIP). So it might end up being
quite lucrative.

[0] [https://github.com/open-wa/wa-automate-nodejs](https://github.com/open-
wa/wa-automate-nodejs)

[1] [https://gum.co/BTMt](https://gum.co/BTMt)

[2]
[https://www.buymeacoffee.com/smashah](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/smashah)

------
empath75
A lot of open source developers on high profile projects are paid full time to
work on their open source project as part of their jobs. Or they built a
closed source project and their company open sourced it.

------
mraza007
Can open source projects help you become consultant. I have seen many people
choosing that path they might be contributing to opensource and providing
services to the companies based on their skills

------
carapace
> What are some tips to get into open source and turn it into fulltime
> career[?]

Don't.

If you want money get a job.

If you can't help but write software, if coding is what you do, all day, every
day, because everything else is fucking dull, if you, like Asimov, take your
typewriter on vacation, _then_ , one day, your skill and art will be
superlative. On that day, give the world your software.

I roll out of bed and within twenty minutes I'm on the machine. I won't stop
until my eyes cross (my body's way of telling me we're done for the day) at
around midnight to 2AM. I burned up my stomach eating nothing but coffee and
blueberry muffins from dawn to afternoon, I blew out my back from not sitting
on good chairs (Aeron chair FTW three years and my back works again!) I've
been doing this for over a quarter of century _and I 'm still not good enough
to publish my software._

(I do anyway but not because it's good enough yet. It's not.)

Computers aren't about making a buck (increasing a mere scalar value) they are
an investigation into the nature and meaning of truth. A tool for thought.

Bucky Fuller pointed out that, when you have computers, you can just program
them with the available data and they can tell you exactly how to build a
working civilization. ("World Game" is the search term there IIRC.) We could
solve most of our problems on a spreadsheet if we could just get out act
together. We've got all the technology we need already.

(The trick is that we have to optimize globally, e.g. things like connecting
all the world's electric grids into one so that we can shift power around as
the planet rotates. A global grid has greater opportunities for efficiency.)

So, from that POV, trying to make a living from somehow selling software is
counter-productive. Very good programmers have already created all the FOSS we
need. Work to alter the nature of the economic system itself.

\- - - -

To answer your question, I was homeless when I learned most of my knowledge, I
wrote a cool demo and presented it at CodeCon and was offered a job on the
spot. Since then I've worked for many startups and once as a TVC at Google,
but I have never made a penny from open source. No, wait, that's wrong: I once
made $50 selling copies of an RSVP (Rapid Serial Visual Presentation) app I
wrote (in Delphi!) at a college (I sold it at a college, I wasn't attending.)
I hope the two people that bought it got some use out of it. But that's it I
think.

~~~
airlines55
The truth is that making money off of software is not a software problem. It's
a business problem, to be solved with business skills and intuition.

I always think of the remote ok guy who makes most if his products in php,
jQuery, as sqlite3. Software engineers engineering sense is ultimately what
holds them back. I know it does for me.

~~~
carapace
Exactly! Gary Dahl became a millionaire selling rocks.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Rock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Rock)

------
triyambakam
There is a dead comment that not so nicely stated that large companies are the
biggest funders to open source. This doesn't seem too far off... anyone have
any data?

~~~
jcbrand
There are some relatively famous projects that are sponsored by large
companies, but then an extremely long tail of lesser known projects that don't
have a corporate benefactor and are developed collaboratively by small dev
shops, freelancers and volunteers.

I've been involved in the FOSS world for 15 years, and can't remember ever
working with, or receiving patches from a large corporation.

I think large corps generally think they can dominate the landscape, and are
therefore less likely to adopt the more collaborative approach inherent to
FOSS.

------
briandilley
with food and water, how else?

~~~
brongondwana
I hear oxygen is also popular

~~~
mraza007
Haha people gotta pay bills too especially when you are living in a High CoL
area

------
kmike84
Not sure about fulltime career, and also about your current life
circumstances; the best way may depend a lot on them. This is what worked for
me:

1\. University, some time after it. No much obligations. Take low-effort job
to sustain yourself (maybe freelance), spend the rest of the time contributing
to open source. Treat it as a time to learn. The main goal is to become good.
You can learn very different things by contributing to OSS packages, as
compared to working for some outdated local company. Try to internalize how
popular software is organized, how people review code, etc. Find people you
respect, work with them. You don't need to have a shiny CV and pass technical
interviews to work with great people you can learn from, developing great
real-world technology, solving hard problems.

2\. You need a real job. Try to find one which allows you to spend some time
doing Open Source; have it as an important criteria for choosing a job, among
salary, work environment, etc.

For me two types of companies worked as a "real job" which allows OSS
contributions.

First, some small startups / companies. They often don't mind if you open
source a few libraries from the codebase you've created, because usually it is
not the code itself which is important for startups; they're trying to find
product-market fit. For them a benefit is that code become organized better
(after an idea fails, code can be reused for the next idea), and developers
are happier, so it can be win-win. You won't be working on open source full
time, but you'll be able to create something useful, and spend significant
amount of time on it.

Second, there are companies which are built around open source, or
contributing a lot to open source. Often there is a company behind a popular
OSS software (e.g. Elasticsearch for Elasticsearch, or Scrapinghub for
Scrapy). Sometimes company's github has many actively developing OSS projects,
which is a good sign. Look for such companies, apply. There is a higher chance
to be able to work on open source if you join such company. It is not given
you'll be allocated to work on OSS, but a previous experience maintaining Open
Source and contributing to it helps. That's good to be proactive here - use
your experience gained from unpaid OSS work or small startup OSS work, start
contributing without being asked.

According to my experience, working full time, having family and having
significant Open Source contributions is very hard, unless an employer
supports it, or unless the job is not really a full time job.

There are "rockstars" which are able to sustain themselves just by working on
their own OSS projects, but I think currently they are outliers, not a norm.
It may be possible to do this, but I've personally seen way more opportunities
to do sustainable OSS work as a part of day job, as compared to donations or a
new business.

------
rado
My OSS project is a satellite to my day job.

------
atum47
I usually support my open source work with my full time job. it's not ideal,
but it is what it is for now.

------
johnthescott
by moving certain rich clients to open source for HUGE savings. reps of a few
well know software companies turn six shades of fuchsia when i walk into the
room.

------
robertlagrant
I notice noone's mentioned Tidelift. Why is that?

~~~
jlokier
I think it is because nobody who has responded so far is making money from
Tidelift.

Tidelift is a neat idea.

But it's far from the first attempt at finding ways to collectively fund OSS
development and maintenance. I think by now we're a bit burned out and
skeptical, after seeing various attempts tried every few years, and the
financial figures that show up look pitifully small. To be fair, most of the
others are bounty sites, with most bounties in the <$100 range for features
that may take days or weeks to implement, and Tidelift is something else that
is more corporate-friendly, and realistic to live on for someone.

It deserves mention for being a neat idea, and it deserves to succeed.

But it would need to be paying out to significant numbers of OSS devs to show
up as an answer to this Ask HN question.

~~~
geerlingguy
Tidelift is one of a dozen similar ideas, the problem is all of them rely on
the OSS contributors to self-market, and for most of us, you might as well ask
us to go jump in shark-infested water.

------
jcbrand
Great question, I'm often curious how other FOSS authors earn an income.

I've been earning money writing open source software since about 2005. It's
not always easy and sometimes I've questioned my sanity, but it's been
incredibly rewarding.

Here's my (extremely shortened) history with FOSS:

Between 2005 and 2015 I worked at various small dev shops that built websites
based on the open source Python-based Plone CMS (see
[https://plone.org](https://plone.org)). We would modify Plone via plugins
that we would (usually) open source and as I got better I also started working
on the core Plone code as well. I also started contributing to various other
FOSS Python libraries. Most of this was paid work as part of my day job.

In 2013 I started a side-project writing a web-based FOSS XMPP chat client
called Converse.js (see [https://conversejs.org](https://conversejs.org)).
This was purely for fun and I had no monetisation strategy. Over time people
started contacting me with requests for paid work and I started to realise I
could potentially work on Converse.js full-time. In 2015 I quit my job as
Plone dev and started freelancing, trying to work only on Converse.js-related
work.

Working on Converse.js has been extremely rewarding with diverse challenges.
Here are some examples:

* Asynchronous frontend JS development that's not HTTP-based, but XMPP-based

* Designing and creating UI/UX for a product that many people use personally and professionally

* Developing a plugin system

* Developing an extensible API

* End-to-end encryption of messages via libsignal

* Standardized protocol development of XMPP via the XMPP Standards Foundation

* Managing an open source project with multiple technical contributors and many users

For a while I took on other jobs to pay the bills, but over time the
Converse.js related work became the bulk, and in 2018 I worked the entire year
only on projects related to my FOSS chat client.

In 2019 I accepted a full-time position at a company that is building out a
chat solution based on Converse.js. I made it clear that I want to continue
maintaining and running the project and that I want to upstream work into the
open source project whenever possible. So far this has worked out very well
and I continue writing a lot of FOSS code.

Concerning tips on how to start working on FOSS code:

* Look for a company that advertises the fact that they write open source code. Lots of smaller dev shops that use FOSS themselves also contribute back. Alternatively, ask the company where you're at whether you can open source some of the code you're working on.

* (Much, much harder, but very rewarding) Start a FOSS side-project and hopefully grow it into a size and scale where other people start to notice and use it. Once enough people use it, you'll start getting paid work from the people depending on it.

------
alexellisuk
Alex Ellis here - the author of Inlets and OpenFaaS.

If you want to work on Open Source as a full-time career, the best option is
to find a company that is working on or invested in an OSS project and join
that team.

Examples: VMware contribute heavily to Kubernetes. As do Azure, and a myriad
of other companies from large to small. I tried this option, it has pros and
cons, if you go for this one, let's hope you like politics and corporate
jargon.

The question is - what does "full time open source" mean to you? To me, it
means work on independent projects. Unfortunately that alone is not
financially sustainable in the long term. You may be able to drain down your
savings for a few months, but then you're going to be left feeling a little
down and out.

Options for independent OSS work are a little rough, read this from 2019 if
you're a project lead and think that somehow the community or users will pay
your way just because they use the software in critical systems, spoiler -
they won't - the reason they are using your software is because it's free:
[https://blog.alexellis.io/the-5-pressures-of-
leadership/](https://blog.alexellis.io/the-5-pressures-of-leadership/)

If you have your own projects that you want to work on, you'll need to find a
revenue stream.

This is what I wrote up for those considering going independent: "What you
need to know before you go freelance" \-
[https://levelup.gitconnected.com/what-you-need-to-know-
befor...](https://levelup.gitconnected.com/what-you-need-to-know-before-you-
go-freelance-259bd9d4b2d1)

Options which clearly do not work: sponsorship, donations, asking users to
support you, offering commercial support as a single-person company

Options that do work: Job at big-co (you won't work on your own projects, but
theirs, or their interests). Working for yourself as an independent
consultant, and taking a "pay cut" to contribute to OSS as and when you feel
like it. You could also create a paid product and use this to find some "time
off paid work", which is essentially what OSS is. That product could be based-
upon the OSS you want to build, or not.

I do have a GitHub Sponsors account, but I run it as a value-add subscription,
not as a donation platform.
[https://github.com/sponsors/alexellis](https://github.com/sponsors/alexellis)
\- starting a consulting business from scratch is not easy, especially in
global lock-down and a spending freeze. This, eventually may provide a buffer
to pay the monthly accountancy and company costs.

Longer term plan for my business is to capitalise on product and consulting
practice. Open Source will be "in the car", but not in the driving seat.

The question for you is - what do you think it means to "work on open source
full-time", why do you want that and what are the alternatives?

------
rayrrr
Day job. No time to explain more because...well, day job.

------
baybal2
Full time job?

------
cwizou
> But the question is how do you sustain yourself while working fulltime on
> building/maintaining open source software

One thing I would suggest, is thinking about what's acceptable to you ?

At the risk of summarizing what's been said already :

1) Get donations

2) Build some form of open source business (consulting, or open-core)

3) Find a business that will pay you to work some part of your time on open
source

4) Find another work and do open source on the side

I think that it's very easy to fall into the 1) trap. In many ways, it
probably aligns the most with the values of open source which you seem to care
about, but except for a handful of people, this is clearly unsustainable and a
road to sadness. And all the various efforts that I've seen over the last 20
years to "improve" this situation have failed.

Solution 2) is pretty popular around here, for obvious reasons. Especially on
the "open core" side, it tries to find an equilibrium point between open
source and making money. While I'm sure there are many successful examples,
there's also a pretty big tension between the two sides on terms of ideals,
and they may not define what's success the same way. You may not enjoy a
successful exit.

Which brings the last 2 solutions which are pretty similar. One thing I'd say
is that in general, there's a lot of demand for software engineers. Many
fields have needs for them (a lot of them outside the software industry) and,
to keep this short, you probably have options to find something that you can
accept (you may not want to work at Oracle !).

In my case, I've been taking care of a macOS screensaver[1] for a couple of
years now. Since I didn't start the project, I've always felt bad about asking
for donations, but a few users insisted, so I've added a small donate button.
Despite the stars and downloads, the donations are far from even covering my
expresso addiction ;)

But I never expected otherwise. And sure, I could make the donation thing more
prominent, some may even say put a button in the preference panel of the
screensaver. I'm not sure it would move the needle by that much, and it's
probably not worth the extra guilt I'd feel about asking for those.

So in my case, I do freelance engineering jobs, surprisingly completely
unrelated to the insanely niche field of macOS screensavers ! I also try to
work on (unrelated) iOS apps for myself, although my expectations on that are
mild, it's not an easy path.

But I do have control of my time, and I enjoy being able to keep adding new
features to Aerial (there's weather in the latest betas !), although that
effort tends to come in bursts depending on my free time. And although it's a
burden, I've even taken to "enjoy" doing support, which I certainly wouldn't
have expected !

[1]:
[https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial](https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial)

------
donedealomg
Most open-source software is written by people who are paid by large
corporations.

For example, Everybody on the Open-JDK program is on the Oracle payroll.

Yes, that's right. Large Corporations are the biggest contributors to open-
source software. I know that might burst a bubble of people thinking we all
sit in mommies basement coding the best software around for free, the reality
is different. Microsoft, for example, is one of the biggest contributors to
the Open Source community on the planet.

~~~
theredbox
You will get downvoted to hell for this but this is a sad reality.

Most people dont realize that open source is unsustainable. Only the big and
strong (the megacorps) will be able to outcompete everyone by providing
complex stuff for free.

