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.
Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself
51–60 of 318 posts
Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself
#52Sustainability 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 l…
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!
Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself
#53[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself
#54Sustainability 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 l…
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!
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?
Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself
#55Sustainability 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 l…
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!
Embrace, extend, extinguish?
Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself
#56For 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.
Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself
#57I'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.
Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself
#58I 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).
Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself
#59I'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 Our GitHub: https://github.com/GladysAssistant/Gladys/
Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
Embrace, extend, extinguish?
Wouldn't surprise me, but the Windows fanatics jump on anyone who questions Windows embracing Linux/open source or who bring up Microsoft's business practices back in the day (especially in relation to how much people love Bill Gates today, plenty of people would do the same as Bill with that amount of money, though unsurprisingly not that many who are willing to engage in the type of behaviour required to amass that amount of wealth in the first place).