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Show HN: Get Paid to Build Your Next Side Project

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Re: Show HN: Get Paid to Build Your Next Side Project

#371

Post by quadrangle »

austenallred wrote: post #176
sanbor wrote: post #52

Photoshop license costs $348 a year. If 1000 people get together and put $400 each, you'll get $400000. That money could be used to leverage a Gimp to be more Photoshop-users friendly. Then you don't have to keep with the subscription model. You have a great piece of open source software available for everyone to use as long as they want. You can do another round to get more features added. This solves the issue that…

Crowdfunding open source seems like a good idea in general (in fact I could see a platform built around that specifically), but you may be underestimating the amount of money/effort required to build something comparable to Photoshop. So I like the idea in principle, but not in this particular instance. For what it's worth, I think Sketch is much more user friendly and is $99 one-time. Certainly not OSS, but a better…

There are crowdfunding sites that either just happen to be used for these things or are focused on them, the issues are complex. Here's a run-down (that needs a couple updates like including Open Collective): https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-crowdfundi... (on the wiki for a still in-progress platform designing a new funding approach around the specific challenges of free/libre/open projects)

Re: Show HN: Get Paid to Build Your Next Side Project

#373

Post by brady747 »

bqe wrote: post #177
rgbrenner wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$400k pays for 3 people.. maybe a couple of more if you hire from a cheaper country. If all GIMP needed was a few more developers to be competitive against PS, that would have happened by now. You're seriously underestimating the amount of work GIMP needs to do.. and/or the amount of work that already goes into GIMP.

This reminds me of the joke about the economist who refuses to pick up the $20 bill on the ground because surely someone else would have already picked it up.

Sounds like the Alinsky bit in "Rules for Radicals" about working inside and outside of people's experiences:

"....In a similar situation in Los Angeles four staff members and I were talking in front of the Biltmore Hotel when I demonstrated the same point, saying: "Look, I am holding a ten-dollar bill in my hand. I propose to walk around the Biltmore Hotel, a total of four blocks, and try to give it away. This will certainly be outside of everyone's experience. You four walk behind me and watch the faces of the people I'll approach. I am going to go up to them holding out this ten-dollar bill and say, 'Here, take this.' My guess is that everyone will back off, look confused, insulted, or fearful, and want to get away from this nut fast.

From their experience when someone approaches them he is either out to ask for instructions or to panhandle — particularly the way I'm dressed, no coat or tie."

I walked around, trying to give the ten-dollar bill away. The reactions were all "within the experiences of the people." About three of them, seeing the ten-dollar bill, spoke first — "I'm sorry. I don't have any change." Others hurried past saying, "I'm sorry, I don't have any money on me right now," as though I had been trying to get money from them instead of trying to give them money. One young woman flared up, almost screaming, "I'm not that kind of a girl and if you don't get away from here, I'll call a cop!" Another woman in her thirties snarled, "I don't come that cheap!" There was one man who stopped and said, "What kind of a con game is this?"...."

https://archive.org/stream/RulesForRadicals/RulesForRadicals...

Re: Show HN: Get Paid to Build Your Next Side Project

#375

Post by pwthornton »

sanbor wrote: post #52

Photoshop license costs $348 a year. If 1000 people get together and put $400 each, you'll get $400000. That money could be used to leverage a Gimp to be more Photoshop-users friendly. Then you don't have to keep with the subscription model. You have a great piece of open source software available for everyone to use as long as they want. You can do another round to get more features added. This solves the issue that…

GIMP is a steaming pile of shit. It's not 400k away from being a Photoshop competitor. Maybe it is less so now, but when I last used it, I said never again. If you need Photoshop to actually get work done, the $120 it costs ($120 gets you both Photoshop and Lightroom) is well worth your money. Many people charge more for one hour of contract work than Photoshop costs to buy for an entire year.

But there are very good Photoshop competitors that don't cost a lot of money. Pixelmator is $29 and a better program for many users. It's lightning fast to open and use and it requires less computing resources.

I remain deeply unconvinced that any software that requires an elite UI and interaction model will ever come out of a software libre solution. In addition, most software libre solutions are simply copies off of someone's else's ideas and hard work. It can't exist without paid software to copy first.

What are we even doing in tech and software if we are arguing that people should copy other people's work and then make it free, causing people to lose their jobs?

Re: Show HN: Get Paid to Build Your Next Side Project

#377

Post by ceejayoz »

hackerews wrote: post #374

Awesome. Over $1k MRR of opportunities up in last few hours. Looking forward to see these products built!

The amount of dev needed to get that $1k MRR is probably in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. I wouldn't get too excited yet.

Re: Show HN: Get Paid to Build Your Next Side Project

#378

Post by beefsack »

pwthornton wrote: post #375
sanbor wrote: post #52

Photoshop license costs $348 a year. If 1000 people get together and put $400 each, you'll get $400000. That money could be used to leverage a Gimp to be more Photoshop-users friendly. Then you don't have to keep with the subscription model. You have a great piece of open source software available for everyone to use as long as they want. You can do another round to get more features added. This solves the issue that…

GIMP is a steaming pile of shit. It's not 400k away from being a Photoshop competitor. Maybe it is less so now, but when I last used it, I said never again. If you need Photoshop to actually get work done, the $120 it costs ($120 gets you both Photoshop and Lightroom) is well worth your money. Many people charge more for one hour of contract work than Photoshop costs to buy for an entire year. But there are very good…

> GIMP is a steaming pile of shit.

Hyperbole much? GIMP is high quality software and I'm sure I'm not the only one who prefers it to Photoshop.

Re: Show HN: Get Paid to Build Your Next Side Project

#379

Post by quadrangle »

For reference, the site CoFundOS.org (which is now something TOTALLY unrelated) used to be a bounty service just like this where people all added their pledge to fund the start of some new project if someone came along and accepted the task. Not sure if there's any reference available anymore. They focused on Open Source, whereas DemandRush seems to focus on services, many of which could qualify as SaaSS even, see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...

Anyway, the big issues here are those all bounty-type sites face (which seems, for some reason, to be the thing everyone keeps trying over and over and keeps thinking is a new idea). See for reference, https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/history/software...

Re: Show HN: Get Paid to Build Your Next Side Project

#380

Post by chipotle_coyote »

sidlls wrote: post #279
chrshawkes wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What senior dev makes less than 100k in the USA these days?

Plenty, outside of the usual suspect locations (SF, NY). A six figure salary for devs, senior or otherwise, is unusual outside those areas. It's not unheard of, but it's not typical, either.

I'm not convinced the $150K+ salary figures I see sniffed at on HN as "bare minimums" are quite as common even in SF/NY/etc. as people imagine they are. Startups and (some) "star name" tech companies in those areas hit those figures, but even today I still see more technical jobs than one might imagine in the $80-120K range. I'm aware a lot of software engineers insist that when they're only making $140K they're underpaid given all the Amazing Stupendous Value™ they bring to their companies, but I have some doubts about how sustainable such figures are going to be at most employers as the VC markets tighten (which is definitely happening now).
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