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GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

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Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#171

Post by jart »

swat535 wrote: post #161
goostavos wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever maintained a large open source project? It is so, so far removed from the pure "just creating for the sake of software" idea. It is a job. It can exhausting, frustrating, boring, tedious, etc... you trade your nights and weekends for... the creative spirit? The joy of creating? People talk about OSS like /r/choosingbeggers. "Why would I pay you for art? You should do it because it's your passion" To be…

I've never maintained a large OSS project, it's mind boggling to me that the community have somehow managed to push the maintainers towards burnout instead of being grateful for the free gift they are receiving. Expecting the maintainer to keep pushing updates forever is insanity imo. It also rubs me the wrong way when maintainers demand monetary compensation I feel like this muddies the water. But maybe this is the…

Don't blame the community for pushing maintainers towards burnout. Blame the folks who make maintenance needlessly necessary, by doing things like pushing for systemic tooling reforms that only serve big company use-cases, or the ones who create license drama. If it weren't for them, then works contributed to the open source commons wouldn't need maintenance any more than the Super Mario Bros. ROM needs to be maintained.

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#172

Post by alexellisuk »

therealmarv wrote: post #122
codegladiator wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you won't get money from OSS contribution for most part. If your priority is money, then OSS is not the best option unless you have a clear strategy of monetizing it.

I will tell you a secret: There are corporate and non-profit organizations out there which want to you to write open source software and they pay you for it (I know it's shocking).

Dozens of open jobs at VMware for professional / career Open Source positions: https://careers.vmware.com/search-jobs/Open%20Source%20Engin...

Big companies have an Open Source Program Office (OSPO) where community / OSS skills and licensing knowledge mean you can help the company both consume OSS and contribute back to it.

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#173

Post by huffmsa »

wincy wrote: post #92
huffmsa wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just thinking the other day, "If Wikipedia became a paid product, would I pay for it?" Really, what would happen if it became a for profit product? Would I pay for access to the greatest single repository of information the world has ever seen? Or would I shrug my shoulder and let Google tell me that I actually meant to query something else, and trust that the top placed link is really the best?

The question “what kind of car does Jimmy Wales drive?” Popped into my head after reading this. Is it ok if he drives a Tesla from profiting off Wikipedia? What about a super car? Would anyone care?

Some probably would, at which point Mr Wales would hopefully say "fine, it's now $5 / page view, or a flat $500/month".

Both of which are probably on the low end of what the content is worth.

When you really think about it, we write off free access to the largest repository of information ever as something which just happens to exist.

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#174

Post by wincy »

huffmsa wrote: post #173
wincy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question “what kind of car does Jimmy Wales drive?” Popped into my head after reading this. Is it ok if he drives a Tesla from profiting off Wikipedia? What about a super car? Would anyone care?

Some probably would, at which point Mr Wales would hopefully say "fine, it's now $5 / page view, or a flat $500/month". Both of which are probably on the low end of what the content is worth. When you really think about it, we write off free access to the largest repository of information ever as something which just happens to exist.

From 2013 but I found it.

https://www.quora.com/Which-car-does-Jimmy-Wales-drive

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#175

Post by cercatrova »

lone_haxx0r wrote: post #163

[Unrelated] > But the factory lector didn’t have Medium and Hacker News to tell him every single day that the radio is coming to take his job. My thoughts: Who reads Medium everyday? > Sizzy got 2352 upvotes on Product Hunt. It was the product of the day, the product of the week, and third product of the month. My thoughts: Who uses Product Hunt? Who cares about Product Hunt upvotes? Also, the other day, Korean Githu…

Just as you read HN, others get their news from Medium, Reddit, and so on, and they do care that the news source is sustained so that they can get future news. I do the same for HN, it would annoy me if it disappeared tomorrow, so perhaps you are the odd one out. Nothing wrong with that, just an observation.

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#176

Post by joeblau »

freshbagels wrote: post #142
joeblau wrote: post #88

> when you give away something completely for free, people aren’t that motivated to pay for it. I created gitingore.io about 8 years ago and it's almost at 5000 stars. I had nearly 100k MAU's and that was still not enough to survive. My customers included developers form top tech startups and major companies in the world but the product was free. I ended up selling it so I can re-focus on something more valuable.

Would you mind naming/giving a range of the acquisition price?

I already sold it for $12,000.

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#177

Post by joeblau »

treve wrote: post #123
joeblau wrote: post #88

> when you give away something completely for free, people aren’t that motivated to pay for it. I created gitingore.io about 8 years ago and it's almost at 5000 stars. I had nearly 100k MAU's and that was still not enough to survive. My customers included developers form top tech startups and major companies in the world but the product was free. I ended up selling it so I can re-focus on something more valuable.

I think this is a good example of not all projects are equal. I have donated to projects that have an especially large impact on my project, or that solve an especially hard problem. I don't think your project is either. Lots of people might use it, but relative impact to productivity will probably always be low. I think that's ok, and it's a neat project though.

Yeah I totally agree with you — It definitely took me a few years to learn that but you're obviously sharper than I am :).

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#178

Post by xellisx »

novaleaf wrote: post #105
louthy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel exactly the same (with ~300 forks, ~3000 stars - not that it means anything). It's a creative urge, like writing music (which I also do, and I feel the passion for both is very similar). I've received some donations, but nothing that could pay for anything significant, but I don't really see the donations as something that might eventually pay, but instead I see them as "thank you for the work", which is alway…

My project has 2 stars, 0 forks, and I also can't stop keeping it updated :)

Sounds like my projects too. Cept updating is hard when you have a toddler.

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#179

Post by b3b0p »

kstenerud wrote: post #30

I'm closing in on 100 public, nontrivial, nonforked repos on github. Since github's inception, I've received a total of $200 in donations for my OSS stuff, 1 job from a company that uses a product of mine as the foundation of their business, and many job offers from people who are familiar with my work. I don't make money off OSS, and never have (at least not directly). But I just. can't. stop. I can't. I've tried su…

I wish I had your problem.

After full time at work, gym, any real life tasks I need to attend (groceries, eating, bills, cleaning, etc...) it can be rather difficult and feels like starting a large project (or any) is hopeless (relatively for a single person in their spare time) or maybe intimidating.

Could you perhaps share some of your tips and wisdom as you are now older on how and when you started habitually doing this and how you keep up the energy and motivation? I'm surely not the only one interested in anything you can inspire with.

I have many ideas I want to start and I am excited about. Often I just do not know where to even start. Especially with limited time.

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#180

Post by piccolbo »

How much does he pay for Electron and React? Imagine the sw world with no OSS, not just your app but no OSS at all. Then you can compare the for pay and OSS models. Not everything you need is OSS and the one thing you sell is proprietary. That is the best, for you, of course.
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