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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

#271

Post by pc86 »

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

But the IRS isn't aware of what deductions you have and what credits you qualify for until you tell them. This completely changes your tax liability.

When you actually understand the system, it makes sense why it is the way it is.

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

#272

Post by fit2rule »

xnyan wrote: post #177
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…

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…

Ha, I had the same experience on a date with my brand new tiBook in 2001 .. wouldn't play the DVD .. but VLC, which had been released around the same time as the tiBook, did though!

In my case, we'd carried my tiBook up to the lawn on the front of the Hollyhock house in LA (Frank Lloyd Wright house), and watched Blade Runner on a blanket on the grass with the house in the background, as that glorious California sun set in the distance. My date was most impressed that we were having an outside movie date in that way ... it was pretty neat to have such freedom on a picnic date. (She wasn't as impressed when I checked my email over the Ricochet modem I had though, even though it was frickin' awesome at the time..)

Been a VLC paid subscriber for almost 20 years now, as a consequence.

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

#273

Post by pc86 »

bluGill wrote: post #212
bullen wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gifts are always tax free for the recipient unless both parties fill out some additional paperwork. The annual tax exemption is currently $14k but goes up every couple of years.

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

#274

Post by [deleted] »

jbk wrote: post #181
dueF7un3 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice :) I did expect that much, if only because working on free softwares feels way less pointless than working on yet an other e-commerce company or b2b app fighting to get users through advertisement. Would you mind telling us more about your recruitment process? I'm not in a hiring position myself, but I guess it would be of value for a lot of people here, giving how turn over is a serious blow for everyone.

> 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,…

[deleted]

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

#275

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#276

Post by atomicnumber3 »

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…

Nitpick, but I'd just like to point out that lots of art is commissioned by wealthy patrons. Especially including, historically, churches.

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

#277

Post by svjatoslav »

Accujack wrote: post #168
svjatoslav wrote: post #141

I asked Richard Stallman this question: His answer was: Live cheaply. Eric S. Raymond answer was: Be independently wealthy. I have tried to reach billionaire philanthropists (Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Dean Kamen, Warren Buffet, and others) with the idea that there are very talented people around who have brilliant ideas (say for instance another Newton or Mozart) but are not financially independent to afford to work…

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…

You are using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man argument. It is not about other people being obligated to pay me personally. The point is more general: there is lots of wasted talent. For example: Nicola Tesla did not had own money to support work that later changed the world. Instead he was stuck wasting his time digging trenches and working for Edisson for pennies. It was pure luck that he met George Westinghouse and with his support was able to realize some of his ideas. The point is that too often generally useful work that few gifted people can do does not result in timely or proper compensation to the author. Having dedicated effort for identifying such people and projects and supporting them would be very good use of philanthropic money. And Open Source projects is very good place to look.

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

#278

Post by ArturT »

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.

Sidekiq Pro version was inspiration for me to create a pro version for my Ruby gem called knapsack that automatically splits tests in parallel on CI nodes/jobs.

With the knapsack_pro version I focused on common needs of users and there was simple validation method to verify if particular feature was needed. People just pay if it brings value.

In case of free open source tool, people tend to want something but you don't know if they actually will you use it and sometimes people demand a thing while you have to put the hard work.

When you do paid version of your tool then somehow people are polite. :)

Nowadays I have also support for running parallel tests in JS.

More at https://knapsackpro.com and here is detailed technical explanation how it works https://docs.knapsackpro.com/2020/how-to-speed-up-ruby-and-j...

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

#279

Post by akater »

svjatoslav wrote: post #141

I asked Richard Stallman this question: His answer was: Live cheaply. Eric S. Raymond answer was: Be independently wealthy. I have tried to reach billionaire philanthropists (Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Dean Kamen, Warren Buffet, and others) with the idea that there are very talented people around who have brilliant ideas (say for instance another Newton or Mozart) but are not financially independent to afford to work…

> Live cheaply

> Be indepenedently wealthy

Both are very good suggestions. And I don't think there are better ones around.

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

#280

Post by saluki »

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?

When the Blair Witch Project came out, my Uncle took his son and a few of his friends (Jr. High Age) out in to the woods setup a generator and a TV and they watched the movie in the woods at night. My cousin said they were so scared, but his friends still talk about it to this day when they get together.
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