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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

#131

Post by rsp1984 »

feross wrote: post #19

Sustainability 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…

This. Can't stress points 2 and 3 enough. Remember Segment [1], one of YC's most successful companies, started out as a small open source tool on Github. But even though it was small and had basically no features, the enterprise loved it and asked for more. That's how they realized that they hit a nerve.

So writing and releasing OSS may not lead to direct monetization opportunities, but it can be a great way to get in touch with enterprises and to get demand readings quickly.

[1] https://segment.com/

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

#132

Post by madballster »

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…

How is giving 25 people bread, water and shelter and most of all a job they enjoy not impressive?

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

#133

Post by rsp1984 »

Just do something that the enterprise world cares about. Remember Segment [1], one of YC's most successful companies, started out as a small open source tool on Github [2]. But even though it was small and had basically no features, the enterprise loved it and asked for more. That's how they realized that they hit a nerve.

So writing and releasing OSS may not lead to direct monetization opportunities, but it can be a great way to get in touch with enterprises and to get demand readings quickly.

[1] https://segment.com/ [2] https://github.com/segmentio/analytics.js

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

#134

Post by imglorp »

addictedcs wrote: post #84

I've been working on SoundFingerprinting [1] for almost ten years now. Its Shazam for developers. First 8 years I worked mostly during my free time and weekends. 2 years ago, I decided to monetize the storage for the fingerprints. There is a MIT licensed version of the storage [2], and a commercial one [3], which is fine-tuned for thousands of hours of audio or video content. If you are an enterprise customer, you wi…

Nice to see an open source audio fingerprint. I once interviewed at Mediaguide (now defunct?) who scanned radio broadcasts so they could sell reporting to advertisers when their ads ran, and record labels when their songs played. There's probably a ton more applications.

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

#135

Post by oefrha »

Lemmih wrote: post #4

I have sponsors on Github and rake in a cool $2 per month. It's obviously less after taxes so I also have a day job. https://github.com/sponsors/Lemmih

A ~5k star project of mine brings in an average of maybe ~$15 of donations per year, so I suspect you’re already outperforming the median donation/star (or I’m way underperforming).

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

#136

Post by rbultje »

zozbot234 wrote: post #94
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 li…

This response reminds me of: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1258531455220609025

Opensource/free software powers most of the stuff we take for granted. The software and their maintainers are equally taken-for-granted.

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

#137

Post by jlengrand »

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…

Man, VLC, you and the 25 FTE you created in a sustainable way are much more impressive to me than any Uber, Facebook or other hockey stick growth giant. You folks rock, and thanks for that

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

#138

Post by jbk »

madballster wrote: post #132
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…

How is giving 25 people bread, water and shelter and most of all a job they enjoy not impressive?

Because, as soon as I wanted to raise money from VC to grow the business, it was very difficult to get anything.

And we have a lot of research and projects, that we never get released, and other people use the tech, rewrap it and get the $$ :)

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

#139

Post by jbk »

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.

> Part of your reward is that traffic cone

It's our secret goal: the cone religion! :)

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

#140

Post by justplay »

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 really awesome and i really respect your work.

I never said this file wont open in my system, thanks to VLC.

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