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How to pay your rent with your open source project

plausible.io

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Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project

#121

Post by castlecrasher2 »

joshstrange wrote: post #106
Milank wrote: post #43

Most of the people writing OSS do it for fun/side project/to solve a problem, not for the money. Problems come if that peace of software gets popular, they get a lot of bug reports, improvement suggestions/requests, emails, noise in general. And a person who wrote the software has a full time job, so the time available for OSS is limited. That person is probably well paid in it's current job, so the OSS has a long wa…

I have considered open sourcing projects before but decided against it due to not wanting to support it. I have a hard problem saying no or ignoring people and so little side-projects or proof-of-concepts that I have open sourced turned into more of a pain that they were worth. Example: I got a Eufy RoboVac 15C and I was in a homebridge-craze at the time I got it. So I found some code in python that was able to contr…

>Is this just selfish or what?

No. I've abandoned game mods I created because I don't play the game anymore. Had maybe a dozen users ask for it to be updated, it just doesn't fit my priorities.

No shame in setting your boundaries.

Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project

#122

Post by sushshshsh »

alextheparrot wrote: post #94
victor106 wrote: post #84

I asked this on HN a few days back. I open sourced a library and its become heavily used by some of the largest enterprises who make lot of money using that library as one of many. It takes a lot of my time to keep it updated so I would like to be compensated some how for the time it takes me away from my family Even though its used by small and medium businesses I would like only the largest businesses to pay for it…

The most direct way to monetisation I’ve seen in the community is writing a book or doing consulting. Maybe there are other ways that aren’t as visible to a casual observer.

So for someone trying to follow this path, basically I open source a library and try hard to get important people to adopt it, and then if/when they need more help using my code in their systems, they will pay me money to write the code for them instead of some other dev?

Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project

#124

Post by osamagirl69 »

soamv wrote: post #119
Milank wrote: post #43

Most of the people writing OSS do it for fun/side project/to solve a problem, not for the money. Problems come if that peace of software gets popular, they get a lot of bug reports, improvement suggestions/requests, emails, noise in general. And a person who wrote the software has a full time job, so the time available for OSS is limited. That person is probably well paid in it's current job, so the OSS has a long wa…

> Most of the people writing OSS do it for fun/side project/to solve a problem, not for the money. Not to pick on you personally, but this sort of assertion is often thrown around with no data. It's not even clear to me that it's one or the other. For me personally it was always a mixture of both -- there's a lot of fun but I wouldn't do it without the money. But that's kinda true for my non-OSS engineering work, too…

I am more on the hardware side where the economics are different. When I was younger I was largely motivated by trying to commercialize my projects (not just releasing the full design files under permissive license, but trying to use noncommercial license and selling kits or whatever) but as I got older the meger income I might make selling hobby kits on ebay is no longer an attraction and I am solidly in the camp of 'give it away for free, and if someone wants to commercialize it all the power to them'.

Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project

#125

Post by jfkebwjsbx »

simonw wrote: post #107
2can wrote: post #57

I’m working on a slightly cheaper alternative to Plausible called Nibspace - it’s $1 instead of $6 for similar traffic volume. https://nibspace.com

Are you sure you want to deal with customers who only pay you $12/year? Any profit you get from them will be wiped out the second they send you an email and you take the time to read and reply to it.

It depends on the percentage of users do so.

Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project

#126

Post by alextheparrot »

sushshshsh wrote: post #122
alextheparrot wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most direct way to monetisation I’ve seen in the community is writing a book or doing consulting. Maybe there are other ways that aren’t as visible to a casual observer.

So for someone trying to follow this path, basically I open source a library and try hard to get important people to adopt it, and then if/when they need more help using my code in their systems, they will pay me money to write the code for them instead of some other dev?

I’ve been part of workshops run by key contributors, as well as seen consultants brought in to try to optimise code using their open source code. There are a lot of ways, but they usually aren’t as direct as “normal” employment.

There’s also another category where you get hired by a company using your code to help drive and prioritise enterprise features in the project. I’ve seen plenty of internal forks of big open source projects where contributors are actively working and trying to upstream the internal development.

Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project

#127

Post by hamandcheese »

joshstrange wrote: post #106
Milank wrote: post #43

Most of the people writing OSS do it for fun/side project/to solve a problem, not for the money. Problems come if that peace of software gets popular, they get a lot of bug reports, improvement suggestions/requests, emails, noise in general. And a person who wrote the software has a full time job, so the time available for OSS is limited. That person is probably well paid in it's current job, so the OSS has a long wa…

I have considered open sourcing projects before but decided against it due to not wanting to support it. I have a hard problem saying no or ignoring people and so little side-projects or proof-of-concepts that I have open sourced turned into more of a pain that they were worth. Example: I got a Eufy RoboVac 15C and I was in a homebridge-craze at the time I got it. So I found some code in python that was able to contr…

Projects like homebridge cater to less-technical folks, so it’s no surprise that the support burden would be high.

Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project

#128

Post by crispyambulance »

soamv wrote: post #119
Milank wrote: post #43

Most of the people writing OSS do it for fun/side project/to solve a problem, not for the money. Problems come if that peace of software gets popular, they get a lot of bug reports, improvement suggestions/requests, emails, noise in general. And a person who wrote the software has a full time job, so the time available for OSS is limited. That person is probably well paid in it's current job, so the OSS has a long wa…

> Most of the people writing OSS do it for fun/side project/to solve a problem, not for the money. Not to pick on you personally, but this sort of assertion is often thrown around with no data. It's not even clear to me that it's one or the other. For me personally it was always a mixture of both -- there's a lot of fun but I wouldn't do it without the money. But that's kinda true for my non-OSS engineering work, too…

> ...this sort of assertion is often thrown around with no data.

I think it's basically impossible to have "data" on why people work on OSS, on what their actual motivation is. All you're really going to get is anecdotal.

There are good reasons to explore ideas and participate in projects that extend beyond making pocket change through clickbait.

Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project

#129

Post by mperham »

victor106 wrote: post #84

I asked this on HN a few days back. I open sourced a library and its become heavily used by some of the largest enterprises who make lot of money using that library as one of many. It takes a lot of my time to keep it updated so I would like to be compensated some how for the time it takes me away from my family Even though its used by small and medium businesses I would like only the largest businesses to pay for it…

Easiest is to license it as GPL or AGPL, sell a commercial license.

Re: How to pay your rent with your open source project

#130

Post by clueless123 »

barrkel wrote: post #50
Milank wrote: post #43

Most of the people writing OSS do it for fun/side project/to solve a problem, not for the money. Problems come if that peace of software gets popular, they get a lot of bug reports, improvement suggestions/requests, emails, noise in general. And a person who wrote the software has a full time job, so the time available for OSS is limited. That person is probably well paid in it's current job, so the OSS has a long wa…

Most people who write OSS do it as employees for companies for whom OSS is a strategic asset.

In my experience this is not 100% true. Many times you get involved on OSS to "scratch your own itch" be it a personal project from scratch or collaborating on somebody else OSS project by fixing/adding something that irks/needs you specifically.
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