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What they don't tell you about maintaining an open source project

andrej.sh

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Re: What they don't tell you about maintaining an open source project

#101

Post by notpushkin »

j16sdiz wrote: post #96
notpushkin wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a company in Estonia for cases like this. The amount of paperwork is nearly zero, the corps are happy they’re working with an actual company, and you can do things like holding money there (for business purchases) and paying no taxes in your home country (unless they have a CFC rule, notably US and Japan, in which case eh good luck).

It is easier in EU than in US.

It depends. Sibling thread has some horror stories about Germany, for example.

Estonia has been trying to get foreigners to open their businesses there for a while now: https://e-estonia.com/ But I don’t think that helps US residents too much (ask your tax advisor about CFC rules; I have only a vague understanding that it’s a PITA).

Re: What they don't tell you about maintaining an open source project

#102

Post by phendrenad2 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #47
carlosjobim wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, stop with this slave mentality please. You can make invoices without funding any company and without the tax office getting in your hair. It's not illegal to charge for your services and never has been. You can declare that income just fine, or skip it. The tax office won't bother you.

The IRS will definitely bother you if they figure out you have unreported income. Will they find out? Maybe not if it’s a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars. More than $10K? Then it gets more likely. If a client sends you a 1099 then they’ll certainly know.

Reporting income from freelancing is no more difficult than reporting income from your day job. So we're left still mystified what mbirth was talking about.

Re: What they don't tell you about maintaining an open source project

#103

Post by krzyk »

MrDarcy wrote: post #78
mickael-kerjean wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not as simple as it sounds. Just yesterday I had a call with the Delft university of technology in Netherland, they want me to add some features on the free version of my FOSS product [1] but they did not want to pay anything. Over the last month, I was in contact with a 800B publicly traded company for a 1.8k per year invoice, once we agreed on the general direction they kept adding expectations, first was t…

Universities are a special case. They generally don’t spend money because of the red tape. In much of corporate America expenses under $100 give or take don’t even require documentation, so a $50/month support subscription is easily purchased. Just need to find the person with the purchase card.

It is very hard to find a person with that purchase card.

As a developer in corporate environment I won't get anywhere close to be able to influence anyone to buy a support, or a subscription for an open source or closed source product. This is my third corp, and it was true in all of them.

The most what I got is the approval to do some PRs for such projects during company time.

Re: What they don't tell you about maintaining an open source project

#104

Post by krzyk »

Klonoar wrote: post #54
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Well not every country is Germany. Dunno what to tell you there. The second half of that also sounds unhinged.

Developers want to develop, not play around with taxes.

Most sensible choice in my country is hiring an accountant to do those taxes. It is quite affordable (you pay monthly fee)

Re: What they don't tell you about maintaining an open source project

#105

Post by Aeolun »

guitarbill wrote: post #82
Klonoar wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well not every country is Germany. Dunno what to tell you there. The second half of that also sounds unhinged.

You aren't wrong on either; Germany's tax law is insanely complex but also many people don't want to change the tax law as they can deduct a million and one things.

Including companies! I love my deductions (not in germany though)

Re: What they don't tell you about maintaining an open source project

#106

Post by Aeolun »

SoftTalker wrote: post #53
calvinmorrison wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you purchase a $500/yr support contract 500/hr more like.

I mean you might have to negotiate a bit but yeah, a simple professional statement like “My rate for custom enhancements is $X/hr” is not going to ruffle any feathers. They might not bat an eye. The thing is if you agree, now you have to deliver. Be sure it’s something you want to do. If the project is open source because you don’t want to be a business, then be careful about letting a little quick cash change your m…

> Be sure it’s something you want to do.

Or charge enough that it becomes something you want to do :)

Re: What they don't tell you about maintaining an open source project

#107

Post by degamad »

digi59404 wrote: post #49
carlosjobim wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, stop with this slave mentality please. You can make invoices without funding any company and without the tax office getting in your hair. It's not illegal to charge for your services and never has been. You can declare that income just fine, or skip it. The tax office won't bother you.

This isn’t true. The tax office will bother you, the client also will demand you have an actual company with liability insurance and more. There is a tremendous amount of legal and paperwork once you start accepting money and working with corps. It’s a nightmare.

> The tax office will bother you...

This is entirely jurisdiction specific, so I can't say for certain, but in almost every country I've looked into it for, there is a set of paperwork that an individual can use to independently invoice for work, without the effort of setting up an incorporated company. You will definitely need to record the income you received, and declare it on the relevant tax forms.

There is often a scale variance too - in Australia, "hobby" income is treated differently from "business" income. [0]

In Germany, there is the concept of the "Freien Berufen" ("liberal professions"), in which you can freelance without a company. [1]

> ... the client also will demand...

The client may also demand these things of you.

They are certainly capable of dealing with sole traders, and will have some services provided by people who do not have those things. (Your boss does not check if the receipt you submit for the new bookshelf for the office comes from a registered company or a sole trader carpenter.)

Depending on the scale of the services you are providing, they may prefer to deal with a registered entity, but for small one-off things, that may not be necessary.

If you are regularly working with large businesses who are funding your work, it's worth looking into the most effective tax and legal structures for you. But if you just need to send the occasional invoice off to someone who wants something quick done, it's useful to know what your options are.

One final thought - even when dealing with organisations who prefer to deal with registered businesses, you have options. You can choose to be employed by a company which does that on your behalf. Either a business which you have a good relationship with, and is willing to enter into a casual employment contract with you and bill for your services, or a dedicated contractor management company. Either way, you give up a percentage of what you bill, but in exchange, they take the paperwork and liability overhead.

[0] https://www.ato.gov.au/forms-and-instructions/trust-tax-retu...

[1] https://handbookgermany.de/en/self-employment

Re: What they don't tell you about maintaining an open source project

#108

Post by degamad »

illusive4080 wrote: post #34
mtlynch wrote: post #15

> maintaining kaneo means helping people debug their setups. and honestly? it's taught me more than i expected. > people run kaneo on setups i never imagined: > behind corporate proxies > ... > in kubernetes with custom networking It's OP's project so they're welcome to support whoever they want but I definitely would not offer free support to customers who are obviously using the product commercially, especially in…

I wish. In my company that is an instant no. The amount of legal contracting bull we have to go through for that would quite literally take 9 months.

I'm almost certain there is a way to get the company to pay for pizzas for a staff meeting which doesn't involve any legal contracting bull.

Re: What they don't tell you about maintaining an open source project

#109

Post by distances »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #57
Klonoar wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well not every country is Germany. Dunno what to tell you there. The second half of that also sounds unhinged.

> The second half of that also sounds unhinged. Since Hacker News also centers on entrepreneurship: I know quite some entrepreneurs in Germany who think this way about the bureacratic chicanery that companies have to handle, and already thought about whether hiring a hitman for these politicians would be a good idea. The hate for the political caste in Germany among many people is insane.

One should hire an accountant to handle the bureaucracy, and of course charge enough to make that viable. And you should stop airing your murderous dreams in public, that's disturbed no matter your feelings towards politicians.

Re: What they don't tell you about maintaining an open source project

#110

Post by dwohnitmok »

amarant wrote: post #26
orthodonticjake wrote: post #2

Kinda frustratingly written by ai

I very much doubt it. Never seen an AI consistently miss capitalising the first letter of each sentence for example. The style is efficient in a way that just screams software dev to me. AI's are needlessly verbose. This guy is bordering on needlessly concise. Rather like the style actually. I do hate that if you publish anything online these days, someone will accuse you of having used AI to write it. We're at the p…

This is classic LLM verbosity. It's not concise. The sentences are short, but the passages are verbose.

The author very thoroughly uses AI for everything. If you want further evidence just look at the commit messages for the site. They are almost all AI messages (compare against the author's commit messages for any project pre-2025).

Not saying that the article is bad because it's AI written (or at least heavily AI assisted). After all you enjoyed it! Regardless you're definitely looking at AI prose.

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