How to pay your rent with your open source project • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by ryukafalz » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #116

penagwin wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please, please, please still release your source if you don't mind! Especially for "random hacks" like a home brew bridge! You have no idea how many tiny repos I have used for reference with those types of projects! In many cases your code might be the only working example. You can put a big disclaimer in it, declare it a PoC, and just ignore issues if you'd like - the code doesn't even have to still be working, it's…

If it's just a small script you can throw it up on GitHub Gist. People can still leave comments there, but you might feel less obligated to spend your time on those than if you see "[x] open issues" on your project.

You can also disable issues entirely on a project, if it's slightly larger than just one script. This, plus a disclaimer on the readme like "This was made solely for my personal use and I cannot provide support!" seems like an okay way to go about this.

I've written hacky one-offs before that other people used as a jumping-off point for something more serious, which is pretty cool to see. I'm always in favor of releasing your code for that reason, you never know if someone else will find it useful!

https://sachachua.com/blog/2020/07/why-i-love-free-software/

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

#132

Post by axegon_ » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

mhh__ wrote: post #117

axegon_ wrote: post #41

Sadly the article neglects the single biggest problem in open source: very few people, or companies for that matter, are actively willing to contribute in any way, whether it be contributing with code or financially supporting a project. Even big and popular open source projects are most often self-funded and it's people dedicating their own resources and spare time to support them. All of the things in the article a…

That's not always true. Turning an open source project into a stable business is difficult, but making a bit of money on the side isn't if you do something important and do it well. If you make the best breakfast in the morning people will come; If your library is the solution for (say) embedding python in COBOL and businesses use it, chances are they won't mind being able to pay for support. The first customer is th…

I said most cases. What you are describing are the exceptions, not the rule. I don't remember how he phrased it exactly but about a year or two ago Andy Mueller tweeted that his biggest wish is that scikit-learn would eventually receive enough support to be able to have the maintainers work full time on scikit. Think about this for a second: I can't recall seeing a single ML project that doesn't rely on scikit to a certain degree and the core maintainers are 8 iirc. That's pretty sad if you ask me.

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

#133

Post by 2can » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

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.

I’m willing to test this hypothesis. It’s a marketing exercise for me. I used to overthink a lot about the choice of technology, scaling, etc At the end of the day, what matter is selling something that people want and getting feedback. On the other hand, those analytics are extremely simple, they somehow remind me of a more intelligent version a counter widget we had back in ’90. It’s just a POST with some data additional data being trigger at each visit. I’m sure how this could require a lot of support - time will show... and I’m probably wrong. ;) It boils down to my ability to market the product so that I have this support problem in the first place.

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

#134

Post by xyzzy_plugh » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

ddevault wrote: post #89

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one uses AGPL for libraries, except maybe by mistake. This isn't my experience at all. Here's an example: https://github.com/unidoc/unipdf/blob/master/LICENSE.md > The AGPL is not viral in the sense that all client software accessing an AGPL-licensed service are required to use the AGPL, but rather, such clients are entitled to the source of that service. It puts no obligations whatsoever on client software. Thi…

>This depends on what your "client" is. If you're making library calls, lawyers get uncomfortable. Ah, in this case, this software is designed to maximize conversions to the paid commercial license, so they deliberately use the AGPL in a way which makes it inconvenient for your internal use. This is not common in software which does not have an alternative commercial license. I don't really appreciate this model beca…

I agree with you, and this is where my concern lies: it's Open Source software, but I think that terminology is misleading (in the case of this software), where as, I find some of the close-but-no-cigar licenses much more "Open". So, while I see tremendous value in OSI's definition, I find it is somewhat of an impedance mismatch with what the average fool expects.

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

#135

Post by mindhash » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

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

i think you should add more details / screenshots of product. Your landing page doesn't talk much about what user would get. Is it same dashboard as GA.

Also I would suggest changing your differentiator from cheap alternative to something else. When something is really cheap, it raises question if quality will be as good. You could add '1$ for Beta' or First year to create an impression that you are absorbing the initial cost.

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

#136

Post by mindhash » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

open-source-ux wrote: post #15

There is another option, unpopular with some open source advocates, the source-only option. You simply sell your software product (with source code) for a price. That's it. Simple and uncomplicated. Your customers get the source of your app. They can modify the code to suit their needs. But unlike open source, they cannot re-distribute the app. Very few companies would object to this. Some popular and profitable proj…

Do you have an example of this? If i was on the buying side, I would be wary of just buying source code. Most times writing from scratch is much easier than maintaining someone else's code

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

#137

Post by the_imp » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

tannhaeuser wrote: post #6

Good article, but I thought webpack is founded by The OpenJS Foundation these days, who are making an astonishing job of identifying and sustaining core web packages. Unfortunately, they also picked controversial software like AMP (in exchange for contributions by Google I guess) to make it appear a grassroots or "legitimate" effort. Also, I think the ongoing trend to slap a thin wrapper on top of F/OSS and sell it a…

To clarify/correct this a bit, Webpack is not funded by the OpenJS Foundation. Yes, it is an OpenJS project, but the foundation does not provide financial support for open-source development. It does provide legal, marketing, and other support, as well as being able to assist with infrastructure costs, but it's still up to each project to separately run (or not) their own fundraisers and other funding activities.

Also, it would be incorrect to say that the foundations "picks software" such as AMP; instead, projects apply to join. The decision to accept AMP was made entirely without consideration for Google's status as a sponsor of the foundation. And finally, while it may count as splitting hairs, Google retains ownership and control of the AMP cache; it's the core technologies that have been transferred to the foundation, not the instance run by Google that relies on those technologies.

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

#138

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 5:36 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#139

Post by mindhash » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 5:37 PM UTC

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 think there was a time, most people were doing it for fun but today most people do it for building profile, commercialising it or consulting around it. It offers a path to freedom. Though hard to productise OSS, it seems to work well for the other reasons.

But technically what you are saying may be right. We mostly hear about commercial work because of marketing around it. The real fun problem solving projects are often found only when you need it.

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

#140

Post by arp242 » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 5:43 PM UTC

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…

One solution might be to publish it but just disable issues on GitHub and add a clear notice setting boundaries. Make sure you don't have your email or Twitter or whatnot in your profile either because people will find that and email you no matter what you say in your README.