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GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

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Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#31
post #19
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is probably even worse, people assume that they get what they pay for, so some people won't even look at the free options. It is happening with me right now. I am searching for a Jekyll theme, and there are a bunch of free ones, but because time is money I will only try the paid ones.

Bit of a bipolar market: in Android apps, hardly anyone pays upfront, so apps develop all sorts of weird post-hoc monetisation.

Maybe Apple and Google need to give in and let us have free time-limited trials? Nobody wants to go back to the 90s software "You have 22 of 30 days remaining" popups every time you start an app, but is what we have now any better?

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#34

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…

Damn, is it me who wrote that post ?

When you're a creative person, you're like a tree : you bear fruits whatever you do, you just can't help it :-) (I took that sentence from a presentation online, somewhere on youtube)

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#35
Same way as going to acting school doesn't guarantee you become successful Hollywood actor.

But what about those who went ahead, uploaded their code for free and launched new companies, thanks to the support/popularity received from users of their free code.

Such people minted millions or even billions which they could have never been able to achieve in their lifetime charging normal rates for programming.

You want to be part of a lottery promising big bucks but not happy because not everyone gets suitable payout. Congrats! you discovered how lottery works.

And now you want a payout which helps you pay rent? Such jobs exist, but you might have to write boring code.

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#36

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…

Personally, I find it the case that when somebody makes something their job rather than their hobby, they'll slowly begin on a journey of losing interest. You can take out your anger on a job and leave it at work on the way out of the door - your hobby/project? That lingers with you at home. Maybe OSS is best on the side.

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#37
I have a consulting business centered around my OS project. Project itself does not make much, but related things (support, consulting, opportunities, contacts) are good. It was a good way to leave cubicle and get remote job, once my daughter was born.

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#38
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bit of a bipolar market: in Android apps, hardly anyone pays upfront, so apps develop all sorts of weird post-hoc monetisation.

Maybe Apple and Google need to give in and let us have free time-limited trials? Nobody wants to go back to the 90s software "You have 22 of 30 days remaining" popups every time you start an app, but is what we have now any better?

Problem is the long tail user retention story is incredibly bleak on mobile. It's considered an achievement to get them to last a week, never mind a month.

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#39
Firstly, this post is really excellent and quite profound - I read it end to end and would recommend you do so too if you've just come directly to the comments - it goes a lot broader than the title might suggest and contains quite a few quotes I'll be referring back to.

That said, on the surface point about making money directly from open source, I'd just like to chip in with my own perspective that wasn't really covered in the article (it's a different type of thing).

In the article the author is talking about building a complete, functional product and open sourcing it, and how that means users are very unlikely to pay (donate) cash to the author. This is 100% accurate, and the point is very well made (again, seriously, read this article, it's great).

I've put out a few libraries and tools on my github (i.e. not full products, but smaller component parts others can build products from), mostly to solve my own problems, and have the source easily available and properly licensed to reuse between projects. And hey, if someone else finds them useful, great. This is pretty important - I did this for my own benefit, and I get this benefit regardless of if anyone else stars or uses the repos.

Most of these repos, that's exactly what happened, 1 or 2 stars at best, only I use them. But one of them, react-frontload [0], actually took off because it turned out to be useful for quite a lot of people. Now, the reason for writing and open sourcing that library was the same as all the others. I don't expect, need or frankly even particularly want people to donate money for me to work on that. Any time I invest in improving it pays off anyway, because I use it.

But what has happened because of my work on that library is I've had people contacting me for contracting work integrating it into their product, general job offers, meetup talks, etc etc. So in a way, it has actually led to opportunities for making money, more or less directly. As in, had I not open sourced that, none of these things would have happened.

Just to add that point to the discussion here: whilst you definitely shouldn't expect to make direct money from open source, especially via donations, you absolutely can find it opening doors to opportunities and making money in other ways. But even then, that shouldn't be your motivation going in. I suspect if it were, you might have a lot lower chance of it happening as a result, ironically.

[0] https://github.com/davnicwil/react-frontload

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