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Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself

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Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself

#91

Post by ukutaht »

unixhero wrote: post #82
ukutaht wrote: post #78

I'm working on an open-source web analytics tool over at 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 g…

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.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself

#92

Post by onion2k »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #71
onion2k wrote: post #15

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, et…

> 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 develope…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself

#93

Post by xchip »

jbk wrote: post #57

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…

VLC is awesome, thanks!!!!

Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself

#94

Post by zozbot234 »

jbk wrote: post #57

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…

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

That's actually really impressive, that software of such outstanding quality can be built and maintained so efficiently. It means that great things could be achieved if people bothered to fund FLOSS more, or if effective funding models (a combination of paying for ongoing support + crowdfunding for general development, most likely) became more widespread.

Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself

#95

Post by patrickg »

MrGilbert wrote: post #77
patrickg wrote: post #14

I give away my database publishing software ( 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…

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?

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.

Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself

#96

Post by AdrianB1 »

londons_explore wrote: post #72
jbk wrote: post #57

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…

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.

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

Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself

#97

Post by Havoc »

patrickg wrote: post #14

I give away my database publishing software ( 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…

Great positive vibes in your post :)

Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself

#98

Post by boomlinde »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #40
MattGaiser wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you are European.

In the USA, any non-shady organization will send you a 1099- report of how much income you generated. You're supposed to submit that form when you do your taxes, which is kind of dumb, because a copy of the 1099 was already sent to the IRS. USA tax filing is not efficient for reasons... gives Intuit the stink eye

> You're supposed to submit that form when you do your taxes, which is kind of dumb, because a copy of the 1099 was already sent to the IRS.

Isn't that just an escape hatch if you do have additional income to report? The tax office should present it as such. Here, the tax office gets that kind of report from a bank. If I agree that it's correct, all I have to do is sign a prefilled form digitally. Unless I've generated income elsewhere, doing the taxes as an employer literally takes less than 5 minutes.

Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself

#99

Post by vnorilo »

jbk wrote: post #57

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…

Sir, you work on a different definition of "impressive" than I.

Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself

#100

Post by AsyncAwait »

jbk wrote: post #57

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…

Just wanted to say thanks. As someone who would not be where I am today without FLOSS, I really appreciate people like you.
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