I have a very small JavaScript library. I'm too embarrassed to share that in this list of great work. But someone offered me money to add some modifications in that according to their need. I wasn't able to do that because I didn't have right tools to test the changes.
Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself
121–130 of 318 posts
Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 the…
> There's loads who work on the kernel as part of their job, but that's no different to any other dev job.
What's the problem with that? It's win-win that this arrangement is relatively common.
> 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.
You're right to point out the distinction, but I don't think how do I get paid to work on open source should necessarily be taken to have that meaning.
Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself
#123I'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…
I wonder : do you have the same engineer turn over than "regular" companies, that is developers leaving after two or three years max? Everywhere around me, I see companies who expected to go big and profit on IPO failing. Nothing new, but I get the feeling it's getting harder to attract investors in that model (this was already a feeling I had before lockdown). This kind of company you're building, who focus on profi…
Yes, that whole "go big or go home" model only ever made sense for highly-scalable, user facing services. Open source development and support is in many ways the polar opposite of that. Even many B2B services don't really make sense as something where "take lots of outside investment" is the focus. And if you do need some sort of one-time big push to develop something, that's what Kickstarter and other crowdfunding models can support most directly.
Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself
#124I'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…
Erm... not sure I follow.
While this is technically open source, it's not easily reusable as per your own FAQ and as such this is more of "open sourced for marketing reasons." You aren't really living off making an open source project, but rather you are open-sourcing a part of your service that pays the bills.
I'm pretty much sure that wasn't what the OP was asking about.
Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself
#125Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself
#126I wish people would sponsor me for my open source SwiftUI applications: https://github.com/sponsors/Dimillian/
Because 4500 stars is nice but sponsoring is good too :D
But I have a day job so it's fine I guess.
Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself
#127I've created and maintaining an Android library that implements user-space driver for common USB to serial converters https://github.com/felHR85/UsbSerial (Nothing fancy compared with what others are posting here but it has been my little proud).
I estimate that I've earned around 3 - 4 k€ in 6 years because of this project mostly from: - Freelancing in projects related. - Paid version of an Android app that uses the library - Free version of the same app with ads - Donations
Obviously I have a proper job but I've been able to learn a lot because of this side project. I would do it again
Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself
#128I have a day job, but I'm trying to see if I can make a living off open source. I'm building a set of libraries, licensing them under the GPL, and offering to sell LGPL and Apache 2.0 licenses for those who need them (any commercial use will require either LGPL or Apache 2).
I also found the PolyForm Noncommercial license which, I think is pretty great for hobbyist use and learning, so I'm trying to sell that license for lunch money to hobbyists and educators / charities.
Just getting started, will report back on how it goes.
Repo is here https://github.com/sudhirj/redimo.go
Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself
#129I'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…
Thank you for VLC
Re: Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself
#130I've been contributing to open source projects for a decade or so, mostly in bursts - when I was still 100% hands-on, I'd work on projects that either interest me, or are used at work (e.g. Rails).
Over the past few years I've mostly been working in leadership (but still with a bit of hands-on), so I mostly work on things that interest me. For example, for a while I was obsessed with building a web scraper, and some machine learning stuff, so I built:
https://github.com/fredwu/crawler and https://github.com/fredwu/simple_bayes
Working in bursts works well for me, as I can dial the effort up and down depending on my availability and mental space.