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Ask HN: Getting paid to work on open source full-time?

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Re: Ask HN: Getting paid to work on open source full-time?

#53
I work at Microsoft full time on http://orchardproject.net, a CMS based on ASP.NET MVC, Autofac and Nhibernate. I've been doing that for almost 4 years and many would agree it's kind of a dream job as there are absolutely no constraints from MS to drive the project one way or the other. It's also worth mentioning that our team is much involved in OSS: SignalR, Entity Framework, ASP.NET MVC, Nuget, ... So it's a really bold bet on OSS in general.

Re: Ask HN: Getting paid to work on open source full-time?

#54

for a year or two i worked for mulesource, who make the open-source mule esb (these days, if you visit their site, i think there's more not-so-open stuff as they try to make money, but back in the day it was pretty much open source + paid support). anyway, i got that job by using mule in my previous job, and writing some blog posts explaining it - mainly intended for my co-workers, but i posted them on the net. that,…

I would like to spend some time in the coming months to learn to use MuleSoft's ESB.

Are there any resources outside of what's on the site that you would recommend? In particular, I see that there is onsite training but I would love to have more in-depth training material that's in a pdf or ebook type format or even just online.

Re: Ask HN: Getting paid to work on open source full-time?

#55

I work for ThinkOpen Solutions, which does projects and hosting based on OpenERP, an AGPL licensed software. As such, all the code we develop is AGPL licensed as well, and a fair share is published on launchpad, though some modules are only available to our clients. As for how I did it, well, I replied to a job offer looking for Python programmers :)

I have looked at OpenERP and it looks very interesting.

What types of companies are targeted by your company? I have had thoughts of getting into this space but not sure how companies are willing to go with such a solution versus more established and recognizable solutions (such as Microsoft Dynamics AX, UNIT4, SAP, etc.)

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Re: Ask HN: Getting paid to work on open source full-time?

#56
I think that crowdfunding could provide one answer. Many open source projects are widely used by businesses for commercial purposes. In a lot of cases I think those businesses would be willing to pay money for improvements to be made to the code; if those contributions could be pooled, the amounts of money involved could be substantial.

Re: Ask HN: Getting paid to work on open source full-time?

#57

I work for ThinkOpen Solutions, which does projects and hosting based on OpenERP, an AGPL licensed software. As such, all the code we develop is AGPL licensed as well, and a fair share is published on launchpad, though some modules are only available to our clients. As for how I did it, well, I replied to a job offer looking for Python programmers :)

I have looked at OpenERP and it looks very interesting. What types of companies are targeted by your company? I have had thoughts of getting into this space but not sure how companies are willing to go with such a solution versus more established and recognizable solutions (such as Microsoft Dynamics AX, UNIT4, SAP, etc.) I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Sure, we can talk, shoot me an email.

Re: Ask HN: Getting paid to work on open source full-time?

#58

You can work on academic projects funded by public money. The results are open source. Ours, in bioinformatics: http://intermine.org

I definitely recommend scientific programming as a career.

I've worked as a programmer on bioinformatics projects in academia for the last 15 years. Everything has been open source.

Academia doesn't pay as well as the Real World but there are many benefits. As well as being able to work on open source software, the work is usually interesting. Job security has been excellent and I've moved jobs when I've wanted to (5 jobs in 15 years). Everywhere I've worked has had plenty of vacation days, sick days and a good pension plan.

The most useful benefit to me at the moment is flexibility: I mostly work remotely and I choose my hours.

Many bioinformatics jobs don't require prior experience of the field. I started with a computer science degree and no knowledge of biology and learnt the rest on the job.

Re: Ask HN: Getting paid to work on open source full-time?

#59
post #52

I applied to work at Google, got hired, and was matched to the PageSpeed team. Now I work on https://github.com/pagespeed/ngx_pagespeed It's nice working on free software, but I'd really be just as happy if I'd ended up in a different part of the company.

You're doing good work with ngx_pagespeed! Been running ngx_pagespeed in production for a couple of months now and very happy with it.

Re: Ask HN: Getting paid to work on open source full-time?

#60
post #52

I applied to work at Google, got hired, and was matched to the PageSpeed team. Now I work on https://github.com/pagespeed/ngx_pagespeed It's nice working on free software, but I'd really be just as happy if I'd ended up in a different part of the company.

Didn't you have a chance to express the preference of where you'd like to end up? Also, did you were a fresh grad when you got hired?
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