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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

#241

Post by bergstromm466 »

rom1v wrote: post #167
bergstromm466 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> our recruitment is very different from normal companies. Please could you share a bit about what your recruitment strategies look like? And do you all work remote?

(I'm an employee at Videolabs) 2~3 years ago, I contacted j-b on IRC and got an interview. This was the first time I used IRC to find a job :)

Hey! Thanks for your response. I research Commons based peer production (including software projects), and I'm curious to know (if you want to share) - if when you reached out you had already contributed code to any of their projects, or if were you up to speed with the code in another way, so that once you were officially hired you could be immediately productive working on the newest issues/new product features?

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

#242

Post by virgilp »

cushychicken wrote: post #233

Patrick McKenzie nailed this in a tweet thread a few years ago: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/patio11/status/936629...

> The requested URL /patio11/status/936629310785437696 was not found on this server. That’s all we know.

Either use archive.is or the link to the tweet. google cache doesn't really work.

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

#243

Post by aasasd »

andrewjrhill wrote: post #179
xnyan wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15 years ago I was on a date with a wonderful young lady. We had a picnic and I brought my (at the time) very modern projector to watch a movie, projected on a bedsheet in the woods. Windows Media Player refused to play the DVD. No internet access at all. I thought I had failed...until I remembered that I had installed VLC. Opened the VTS.VOB on the DVD directly and boom, the video started and played back without a s…

How did you power the projector? Did you drag a generator into the forest too?

My bet is on ‘a car’. There are converters to power 220/110V appliances off a car battery.

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

#244

Post by ghaff »

londons_explore wrote: post #201
AdrianB1 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In a way you can pay the rent with it... As soon as you're famous enough in a particular field, companies will hire you just for your name. Doesn't matter if you don't do much useful or only work one day a month - they'll still pay you decently to have your name associated with their brand and products.

That is utterly terrible advice if you actually believe it. Yes, a Google might hire some (very) well-known figures primarily to be public spokespeople. But you can't seriously think that companies are lining up to hire mini-celebs in various tech circles to come on board just to hang around the office now and then.

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

#245

Post by Freso »

orlandohill wrote: post #69

If you want to work full-time on open source, then you need to treat it like a job. Either find an employer who will pay you, or start a business and become your own employer. One way to start an open source business is to use a public/private licensing model, a.k.a. dual licensing with an 'open' license and a commercial license. The key is that you can have readable, modifiable, redistributable source code, without…

I don’t see any of those licenses listed on https://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical and it took me a bunch of digging in the license-review mailing list archives to find when it was submitted for consideration (most recently anyway, sounds like it was submitted previously too): https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists....

The consensus on that list is that License Zero violates certain tenets of the Open Source principles, and as such software released under a License Zero license is not open source software. By extension, this means that getting to work full time on License Zero software means that you’re not working full time on open source software.

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

#246

Post by thih9 »

metabagel wrote: post #228
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…

He contacted wealthy philanthropists, who regularly give money to worthy causes. It’s not an unreasonable thing to do.

These people receive 100s of requests like this. Perhaps they're focusing on funding something else.

Also, I don't understand why people seem to expect a reply to a (probably) cold email.

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

#247

Post by carapace »

airlines55 wrote: post #210
carapace wrote: post #199

> What are some tips to get into open source and turn it into fulltime career[?] Don't. If you want money get a job. If you can't help but write software, if coding is what you do, all day, every day, because everything else is fucking dull, if you, like Asimov, take your typewriter on vacation, then , one day, your skill and art will be superlative. On that day, give the world your software. I roll out of bed and wi…

The truth is that making money off of software is not a software problem. It's a business problem, to be solved with business skills and intuition. I always think of the remote ok guy who makes most if his products in php, jQuery, as sqlite3. Software engineers engineering sense is ultimately what holds them back. I know it does for me.

Exactly! Gary Dahl became a millionaire selling rocks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Rock

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

#248

Post by akling »

I've been building a new open-source OS[1] (including a web browser) from scratch and sharing the process on YouTube for a year and a half now.

At the moment I'm supporting myself and my family with a regular 9-5 programming job, but I'm also accepting donations through Patreon, GitHub Sponsors and PayPal. There's been a huge amount of support coming in, especially given the ambitious nature of my project, and I'm quite hopeful that I'll be able to turn this into a full-time gig not too far into the future.

My tip would be to find ways to share the development process, not just the software itself. You don't have to make videos like I do, but write about it, share screenshots, post about it on social media etc. :)

[1] http://serenityos.org/

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

#249

Post by pomber »

virgilp wrote: post #242
cushychicken wrote: post #233

Patrick McKenzie nailed this in a tweet thread a few years ago: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/patio11/status/936629...

> The requested URL /patio11/status/936629310785437696 was not found on this server. That’s all we know. Either use archive.is or the link to the tweet. google cache doesn't really work.

https://twitter.com/patio11/status/936629310785437696

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

#250

Post by mrskitch »

mperham wrote: post #235

I wrote sidekiq.org starting 8 years ago and blogged about my experiences over time, e.g. https://www.mikeperham.com/2012/08/26/the-sidekiq-experiment... I sell closed source Pro and Enterprise focused feature packs for my OSS projects. This is known as "open core". My first full year in 2013 I sold $85k. I'm in the millions ARR now.

I pretty much stole Mike's business model, and peppered in some cloud-y saas for browserles.io. I'm almost done with year 3, and will hopefully hit 500kARR this year.

Mike's story was a lot of inspiration for me, and I think licensing + cloud-ifying your opensource projects are a ton more viable than hoping for Patreaon or other platforms to pay you. Self-bootstrapped indiehacker style was great for me, but it does require a lot of up-front time and commitment in seeing it through. Upside is that it's not monopoly money being dealt with, and everything is on your terms.

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