
Side projects - fcambus
http://antirez.com/news/86
======
bglazer
I'm working on a side project now that will eventually be an open source
project. I think it could benefit a lot of people.

My problem is that I have a full time job. When I come home at night I want to
cook dinner, run, socialize, drink a beer with a friend, or work on an art
project. I don't particularly want to configure Ansible or read the OpenVPN
docs.

At most I can get 3-5 hours of productive work _per week_ on this project
before I start getting really irritable.

I'm not a terribly skilled web designer so I feel like contract work isn't
really a feasible option.

So I'm stuck with a chicken and egg scenario. I could make huge strides on the
side project if I got funding to quit my job, but I can't get funding without
an already working product.

I've considered quitting my job and diving into it for a few months. I have
savings but this seems foolishly risky to me.

Maybe I just need to be more disciplined.

If anyone has been in a similar situation, I would greatly appreciate advice.

~~~
jldugger
> If anyone has been in a similar situation, I would greatly appreciate
> advice.

You can't have it all. A wife & kids, a full time job, a social life and an
open source hacker reputation. Many of the biggest names in open source have
none of those other things.

~~~
vonmoltke
Then the industry should stop expecting people to have open source hacker
reputations in order to be considered "good". I'm glaring at you specifically,
"Github-is-your-resume" crowd.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Both of these things are profoundly important points. The first being that you
cannot "have it all" and the second that putting the expectation out there
that you should be a "rockstar" when it comes to open source code encourages
unwise choices.

One of the things I noticed at Sun early on it its life were that there were
"types" of folks, people who were so invested in their work lives that they
had no family (or in many cases lost their family) and people who balanced out
family with work. Folks in the latter camp invariably were less well rewarded
than those in the former camp. I found myself slipping into that "work is
everything camp" and consciously chose not to go there, knowing it would limit
the eventual arc of my career. I have never regretted that choice and am still
happily married with kids I know and who know me, long after Sun has faded
into history.

It was a tough call to make. I talked it over with my wife (we were thinking
about kids but didn't have any yet).

------
binarymax
I hope this question isn't too forward - but my main question is 'how did you
afford to do this?'

I have had plenty of fun little side projects (some finished some not), but my
main project is my salaried position. Aside from being independently wealthy,
how can one create and maintain a long term open source project as a full time
job. Consulting on the side? Donations? Something else?

P.S. Thanks for Redis :)

~~~
antirez
Unfortunately I've no good answer for your question, since I'm sponsored by
Pivotal, but if we consider the percentage of open source software created,
only a small percentage is sponsored. Many developers simply do it for free,
as I did it in the first year of Redis developments, because I had an
alternative stream of money to pay the bills. So, my point of view, is that
the IT ecosystem is broken and IT companies are leveraging a huge value from
OSS without providing enough back to pay developments of more OSS. It is one
of the biggest injustices currently happening in the "rich world", but there
is no easy fix.

~~~
revorad
patio11 has a good suggestion in this article (see the last section "A Brief
Meditation on OSS") - [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/01/28/design-and-
implementatio...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/01/28/design-and-
implementation-of-csvexcel-upload-for-saas/)

~~~
davidw
That still relies on the company, or people therein being not quite
economically rational: free riding is cheaper. Unless of course everyone does
it and the good in question is then underprovisioned. It is certainly worth a
try, though!

~~~
hastly
The thing is, free riding isn't necessarily cheaper for anyone.

When you're depending on the software in question, it being underfunded might
mean you're not getting the quality and features that would pay off in
multiples for you. You could be sitting on a pile of bugs, or your dependency
could be abandoned at your expense. These things happen all the time in open
source land and it's a tragedy.

I'm not convinced that freeriding is really rational at all. I would however
grant that it's both easy and lazy.

~~~
davidw
Obviously it depends on the circumstances. There are cases where it's so
important to you that you might as well pay up, free riding or not.

------
graghav
Thanks for Redis. It has come a long way over the last six years. Looking
forward for your "few side projects for the next years" to come.

~~~
gadders
Rather than start a new thread, I'll add my congratulations here.

Congratulations, Antirez!

------
Spearchucker
I have a full time job, and a 3y/o kid. Get up at 7am and take him to school
at 8:30am. Get to work at 9:30am or so. Get home around 6pm. Give my son a
bath, we all have dinner and my son is in bed somewhere between 8 and 9pm. I
then spend ~2 hours on my side project, in bed somewhere between 11pm and
12am. I train twice a week so this pattern happens three days out of 5.

On weekends I can often negotiate up to 4 hours to myself. Progress isn't too
slow, and I keep my sanity.

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netcraft
The site is not responsive for me, here is a cached copy:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://antirez.com/news/86)

~~~
graghav
Yea, it is indeed not responsive. But I think Antirez is affording his time
more on his "side projects" rather than making it responsive.

~~~
lukeholder
I think he means not 'responding', not complaining the website doesn't resize
for different screen sizes (responsive).

~~~
philtar
Responsive meant that before the graphics design crowd took it over.

------
fit2rule
I'm a huge fan of LOAD81, its been a very interesting too for a few things ..
one thing I've used it for is to view system statistics, akin to a poor mans
gnuplot. Its also been valuable in teaching my 7-year old about computing -
the ease with which you can bang out a program to draw stuff is very
appealing. So count me as a LOAD81 fan, antirez .. its one of your side
projects that gets regular use around our house!

------
digisth
Companies have long sponsored (or hired) individuals to work on FLOSS, but I
think we could go a lot further. If we could make it part of the _culture_ of
(scaling) companies / funding ecosystems to say "when we reach X revenue,
we're going to hire /sponsor 5 people to work on FLOSS stuff full time."
Obviously, these companies will have more incentive to sponsor people who work
on software they use heavily (which should stay the first priority, as it
makes a lot of sense), but it'd be great to take it to the next level and have
them hire people who work on useful / popular software that they don't use
everyday (directly) or doesn't have much to do with their bottom line. This
could include 'adjunct' software work like package repository maintainers and
writers of documentation for these projects.

If it wasn't one-offs and outliers, but just something that companies did as
part of getting big, we'd have a lot less need for periodic emergency
fundraisers, and fewer stories about "important software X that's about to
lose its sole maintainer(s)."

------
jmgtan
My situation is getting bad enough that even my wife is complaining that I
don't spend enough time with them (her and my son). I have a full time job
with SAP, I also have regular consulting work on my own which I have been
doing since I graduated from university, and lately I've started working on a
number of products that I strongly believe in.

I've started applying a bit of scrum in my own work where in I have a Trello
board with my backlog, my plan for the current sprint, what is done and what
is deployed (for demo). This allows me to focus and not jump around developing
endless streams of features. I set a side a chunk of time (w/ adequate
negotiations with my wife) where in I blitz through my tasks for the current
sprint. It also helps that my wife is a project manager in her day job so she
understands my Trello board.

I find that this setup is the most effective for me, of course YMMV. For my
consulting work I normally have 1 ongoing project at a time and usually a few
in the RFP type of stage where in I'm still in discussions with clients.

------
_pferreir_
I would like to highlight dump1090, the ADS-B encoder. It has become a "must-
have" for RTL-SDR enthusiasts.

It is small, simple, and works great.

~~~
platz
dump1090 is great.

------
jjling
I have a hard time focusing on side projects for very long. At any one point
in time I'm usually working on 3 or 4 different projects. Then I get burned
out and do something that isn't programming instead, like write a book.

Ironically, the only "side-project" I've finished is a book and not code
([https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/M0X7KAS29H5Q](https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/M0X7KAS29H5Q))
Makes me wonder if I'm cut out to be an entrepreneur or even an developer if I
can't dedicate all my free time to coding.

------
derekp7
Does anyone have any suggestions for promoting an open source project? I hate
mentioning my side project on various forums, even if it is topical -- it
makes me feel spammy. I thought about taking out some ads once I add in a few
more "enterprise" type features, and was hoping that some open-source focused
sites would have a discount on advertising open source projects using unsold
ad inventory. I'd also like to find someone to work with that can point out
deficiencies in the project web site, or general improvements/features I
should add.

~~~
rckrd
-Tutorials & Examples -Extensive documentation

Sure, these are boring things to work on, but in my experience these are what
have let separate a mature project that I can see works from a less mature
project that may introduce even more bugs and maintenance.

------
humbertomn
I'm another believer that focussing in 1 thing is overestimated.

"There’s a myth when it comes to what we’ve been taught about focus. Doing
only 1 thing isn’t focusing. It’s essentially just doing 1 thing. Following a
course of action until completion is FOCUS" \- Hodan Ibrahim

Interesting related read: [http://www.psychotactics.com/blog/psychological-
marketing-my...](http://www.psychotactics.com/blog/psychological-marketing-
myth-focus/)

~~~
darkFunction
I struggle to focus on more than one thing, in programming and in life, one
thing is intensely the single focus of all my passion and energy until one day
it is not.

~~~
humbertomn
Maybe it's hard to measure what exactly is the 1 thing. In my typical day in
my early stage project, I still have to code a few hours per day in addition
to managing design work, doing initial marketing strategy and testing some
campaigns, talking to customers, investors and mentors and making lots of
decisions.

I still spend around 40mins in stuff from my previous startup which I'm not
officially in operations anymore, but still have to help with some things.

On top of all that, I created a side project and built a team to run it and
will be doing only mentoring, and this can be a great help to my oficial
project.

So, I'm not saying this is the ideal setup... Of course a lot will change once
the company starts to grow and we are able to hire more people, but I can say
at the end of the day I'm pretty happy with my production and already thinking
about the next day of work.

------
andhof-mt
I've got a side project. And chances are it will never make any real money.
But I opted to do it because I know its a pain in the butt to make, and if I
don't likely no one else will (or at least do a good job).

Nicely edited, free, organized CS videos. I'm opening sourcing my education:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nyzl3pVXp4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nyzl3pVXp4)

------
cheriot
My side project is an escape from my real job where process, politics, and
domain experts outside of their domain prevent progress...

------
moron4hire
I think the key is that you have to dogfood your own side projects. I have a
project that I've been building over the last, oh, 9 years. I haven't worked
on it exclusively during that time, but I keep going back to it and tweaking
it, making it better, etc., because I actually use it in just about
everything.

------
udev
I am curious whether it gets more and more (legally) tricky for employees of
large tech-companies to have side-projects.

For example, if I am working at Google/Amazon/Microsoft. What side projects
won't get me into legal problems?

Can I work on search, email, virtualization, etc. without being in conflict of
interest?

------
wuster
I agree with his sentiment. Working on side projects keeps this career
interesting. During the most boring, most soul-sucking projects of my
corporate jobs, being able to accomplish projects on the side reminded me of
why I am excited to be building software in the first place.

------
Edmond
You're spot on about using side projects as positive distractions. When you
are working alone on a significant project, at some point you're not going to
be as motivated to work on it, that's where other side projects can be
helpful.

------
xacaxulu
Sicilian pride! Antirez is an amazing guy and the OS community is indebted to
him for Redis.

------
petercooper
Every major source of my income over the past ten years has started as a side
project. Not a single one came out of a deliberate effort to build something
big but began as a mere experiment for the fun of it.

------
sylvinus
For those interested, Salvatore will present Disque at the next dotScale
conference in Paris, on June 8:
[http://www.dotscale.io](http://www.dotscale.io)

------
christopherDam
I need some advice. How other great people find the ideas for side project? I
would greatly appreciate if any one help me to know how other get some cool
ideas.

~~~
seiji
Don't start with an idea, start with a problem. Work on fixing the problem.
Grow from there.

------
m40329180
Brilliant - "because in order to have a long term engagement, you need a long
term alternative to explore new things."

------
digisth
Is there a list of companies and the people they hired/sponsor to maintain
FLOSS stuff?

------
antoinevg
Life is more than work. Make time for the ideas and people you love.

------
shlomozippel
"Side projects are the projects making your bigger projects possible"

Amen.

------
gabamnml
Many congrats for the excellent work with Redis

------
djabatt
IMHO if you are not hacking on a few side projects you are missing out on
learning new things. I love side projects they keep my work and personal life
super fresh.

------
seigel
Thank you sir.

------
Svenstaro
Proxy Error for me.

