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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

#211

Post by zerr »

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…

Another thing with successful open source projects is that people dedicate their whole lives to it - don't you think you'd enjoy more if you had worked on lots of different projects, tech, companies, etc... instead of "just" VLC? For how long do you plan to continue working on it? There's a whole world outside video playback - do you happen to think about this time to time?

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

#212

Post by bluGill »

bullen wrote: post #174
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

In Sweden gifts are tax-free, where do you live and how much tax do you have to pay on those 2$?

In the US gifts are tax free unless someone gives you a large gift. Last I checked it was $10,000, but I believe it is around $18,000 now. Obviously this is large enough that few people care.

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

#213

Post by [deleted] »

dueF7un3 wrote: post #106
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…

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…

[deleted]

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

#214

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #122
onion2k wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem is, for the most part, that the dev will only get paid to work on aspects that advances the employing corporation's interests. It really is just a job.

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

#215

Post by jbk »

dueF7un3 wrote: post #197
jbk wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you mind telling us more about your recruitment process? So, in general, I ask 2 main questions: - talk to me about you, what you like and which project you worked on that you liked. - a generic question, that can be a bit misleading, on purpose. Like "What is the difference between TCP and UDP, and is HTTP over TCP or UDP?" for webdevs or "What is the =0 in C++ classes headers? Since NULL and 0 are the same,…

Thanks for sharing! It sounds like your questions are calibrated to detect if the interviewee is passionate. I totally get that, 15 years ago, it was obvious everyone around was, but those last years I find myself wondering more and more if devs around me didn't get into coding just because "it's a good job", and it looked slightly more interesting than a career in law or commerce. > I have one big issue with recruit…

> It sounds like your questions are calibrated to detect if the interviewee is passionate.

Yes, passionate, so they will work on something cool, and are going to like it. Not passionate in the sense "I can pressure 60hours from them per week" like some SV startups do.

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

#216

Post by adz_6891 »

etimberg wrote: post #152

I've been maintaining Chart.js [0] since 2014. I only work on it during my free time (evenings and weekends) to avoid any problems with my day job. Conflict with my day job is also one of the reasons why I don't take donations. There is some benefit to that though because it allows me to take a day/week/month off if I need it without feeling guilty. Once there is money involved, there are a lot more expectations and…

Great work on chart.js. And thanks for your time on this! Hat tip to you!!

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

#218

Post by addictedcs »

imglorp wrote: post #134
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.

Radio/TV broadcast analytics is the most frequent use case. At least I receive a significant amount of questions regarding it, so the library has been optimized for this task. YouTube ads detection is also an interesting case that falls in this category.

Other use cases are divided between game development, repeating content detection, robocalls detection, or just iOS/Android apps for Shazam like style features.

Surprisingly a couple of times, I was asked about recognizing birds by their singing. The library can't do it, but it is something I am thinking about exploring one day.

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

#219

Post by bluGill »

antocv wrote: post #175
Accujack wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you surprised they didn't respond? Your solution to this problem seems to be focused on what other people can do to make things easier for you and others like you, but that's not how humanity works. You're ignoring that your request is unreasonable because you're taking the easy way out - looking for a source of money and convincing yourself that your efforts deserve it because it's easier than doing the work you…

> The rich aren't obligated to hand you money > use your own money to support open s... Why should he feel obligated to support others?

He isn't. However if he wants to support himself doing open source that is the requirements. Everyone must consider their own values. Starving artist is a meme because many artists live on almost nothing to do art.

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

#220

Post by jbk »

zerr wrote: post #211
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…

Another thing with successful open source projects is that people dedicate their whole lives to it - don't you think you'd enjoy more if you had worked on lots of different projects, tech, companies, etc... instead of "just" VLC? For how long do you plan to continue working on it? There's a whole world outside video playback - do you happen to think about this time to time?

> don't you think you'd enjoy more if you had worked on lots of different projects, tech, companies, etc... instead of "just" VLC?

Well, to be honest, I'd love to extend what we're doing in VLC to other end-user applications like PDF reader, or the basic apps you have on Android and iOS.

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