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Side projects

antirez.com

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Re: Side projects

#71

Post by platz »

hastly wrote: post #16
Avalaxy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IT companies are leveraging a huge value from OSS without providing enough back to pay developments of more OSS. It is one of the biggest injustices currently happening in the "rich world", but there is no easy fix. GPL?

Making everything virally GPL doesn't solve the problem of nobody paying for open source development. I actually think if everything out there was GPL'd, it would make it even more difficult to build businesses and make money from open source software, because you couldn't use open source in a proprietary project if you so chose. I think instead we need a set of incentives in which it's a terrible idea to use softwar…

> it would make it even more difficult to build businesses and make money from open source software

Yes, isn't that kind of the point?

Re: Side projects

#73

Post by SyneRyder »

robotkilla wrote: post #38
binarymax wrote: post #2

I hope this question isn't too forward - but my main question is 'how did you afford to do this?' I have had plenty of fun little side projects (some finished some not), but my main project is my salaried position. Aside from being independently wealthy, how can one create and maintain a long term open source project as a full time job. Consulting on the side? Donations? Something else? P.S. Thanks for Redis :)

as someone who works on a lot of side projects: figure out where most of your free time goes and decide if you can sacrifice the hours you spend on those activities for side projects... and then actually do it. I watch very little TV. I have only a couple of friends that I see every few months max. I don't go to meetups, I don't use social media and I don't play a lot of video games. I can hardly stand to see a day g…

Whoa. Giving up friends & holidays for your side project is a really bad idea. Don't do this. Your side project is not worth being alone & unhappy for.

I'm guilty of working Christmas & New Year, I'm guilty of ditching friends' parties to work on side projects. It rarely gets you further ahead on your project anyway, and can do more damage than you realize to friendships. You have to practice your social skills regularly, and friendships are harder to make the older you get. If you don't put in the time with your friends they'll eventually lose interest in you & move on. Neither of you will really understand each other.

Partying may seem frivolous (and it often is), but it's also a key way of getting to know people & bonding with them. Social media can also be a way to keep up with what's important in the lives of your friends and understanding their interests. Both have their uses.

Giving up TV & video games is a good idea, and if your friends are addicts or lazy or negative then it's a good idea to find better friends. But remember that things you create are ultimately for other people, and it's important that you understand people so you can create better things for them. Code is such a small part of any project, a lot of it involves wetware. Some of your best opportunities will come from the friends you make and the people you meet.

Apologies for the rant, but please take it from someone who's been there & learned a lesson.

Re: Side projects

#74

Post by jjling »

I have a hard time focusing on side projects for very long. At any one point in time I'm usually working on 3 or 4 different projects. Then I get burned out and do something that isn't programming instead, like write a book.

Ironically, the only "side-project" I've finished is a book and not code (https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/M0X7KAS29H5Q) Makes me wonder if I'm cut out to be an entrepreneur or even an developer if I can't dedicate all my free time to coding.

Re: Side projects

#75

Post by moron4hire »

I think the key is that you have to dogfood your own side projects. I have a project that I've been building over the last, oh, 9 years. I haven't worked on it exclusively during that time, but I keep going back to it and tweaking it, making it better, etc., because I actually use it in just about everything.

Re: Side projects

#76

Post by up_and_up »

antirez wrote: post #4
binarymax wrote: post #2

I hope this question isn't too forward - but my main question is 'how did you afford to do this?' I have had plenty of fun little side projects (some finished some not), but my main project is my salaried position. Aside from being independently wealthy, how can one create and maintain a long term open source project as a full time job. Consulting on the side? Donations? Something else? P.S. Thanks for Redis :)

Unfortunately I've no good answer for your question, since I'm sponsored by Pivotal, but if we consider the percentage of open source software created, only a small percentage is sponsored. Many developers simply do it for free, as I did it in the first year of Redis developments, because I had an alternative stream of money to pay the bills. So, my point of view, is that the IT ecosystem is broken and IT companies a…

> the IT ecosystem is broken and IT companies are leveraging a huge value from OSS without providing enough back to pay developments of more OSS.

This!

Not only IT companies but VC's and startup entrepreneurs all rave about how fast and easy it is to develop and get a MVP out the door these days compared to year ago.

What % of their tech stock is OSS that they leveraging for FREE?! Not only that but if you run into a bug, you can even submit an issue ticket directly on github and get a dev to respond and potentially fix your issue for FREE!

Obviously, the pure technology is not the sum of startup execution, but I wonder how many of these people made huge $$$ without donating a nickle to the OSS projects that provided the backbone of their entire technology stack!

Re: Side projects

#77

Post by dragonwriter »

vinceguidry wrote: post #70
dragonwriter wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then one person pays, gets BSD/MIT code, and shares it freely. So, if you set the cost of BSD/MIT code for each release enough for one sale to fund the whole cost of the release, it might work.

They have to maintain it too if they want other people to use it. Red Hat and CentOS comes to mind. Nobody can run OSS RHEL without doing the same work the CentOS people are doing.

> They have to maintain it too if they want other people to use it.

Sure, but BSD/MIT projects can sell premium proprietary derivatives and services to fund both the open source and proprietary parts of the project -- heck, a company planning to do the proprietary aspects could buy the BSD/MIT license to the project and contribute that to a community project, and then contribute some staff development time to the open parts of the project while also building a proprietary derivative (see, e.g., EnterpriseDB and PostgreSQL.) And, the people that are likely to do that are the most likely to spend money to get a BSD/MIT license for something with a free GPL license, since they would actually have a financial interest which would justify the cost.

Re: Side projects

#78

Post by vonmoltke »

josephschmoe wrote: post #51
bglazer wrote: post #42

I'm working on a side project now that will eventually be an open source project. I think it could benefit a lot of people. My problem is that I have a full time job. When I come home at night I want to cook dinner, run, socialize, drink a beer with a friend, or work on an art project. I don't particularly want to configure Ansible or read the OpenVPN docs. At most I can get 3-5 hours of productive work per week on t…

The only way to do it is to have a job where you can complete the work in less than 5 hours a day. Preferably one that gives you the freedom to leave early/come in late so long as you're doing well on your work. No one actually works 8 hours a day and comes home to work 4 hours sustainably. I couldn't see someone doing that for more than two months without getting burned out.

This has been my problem. I have spent my entire career at government contractors, so I need to record 40 hours of butt-in-seat time every week in order to make the auditors happy, regardless of the actual work done. That makes my days 10 hours from when I walk out the door to when I walk back through it, sometimes less if I spend less than an hour at lunch.

Re: Side projects

#79

Post by arh68 »

derekp7 wrote: post #52

Does anyone have any suggestions for promoting an open source project? I hate mentioning my side project on various forums, even if it is topical -- it makes me feel spammy. I thought about taking out some ads once I add in a few more "enterprise" type features, and was hoping that some open-source focused sites would have a discount on advertising open source projects using unsold ad inventory. I'd also like to find…

Put a screencast up on YouTube? I guess it depends what it is, but 8~10 minute videos can be pretty thorough.

Re: Side projects

#80

Post by seiji »

jorendorffmoz wrote: post #63
seiji wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can give back in many ways The standard way society compensates persons for useful goods and services is by exchanging currency, not by bartering favors or by saying "look! we made a billion dollars using your software, here, have these free 40 lines of code as a bug fix. thx." Unrelated note: every time I see these (needlessly?) optimized string compare statements, I fall out of my chair laughing and/or crying: http…

I guess what I'm saying is, I don't see how your (or anyone's) interests would be served by the cost of Redis being a lot higher.

Open source software succeeds because there's no friction for trying new things. So, initial cost will always be zero. People love seeing their software used for new things, so nobody wants to prevent adoption. At the same time, nobody wants to support billion dollar companies for free. It's a perverse inversion of incentives.

Redis gets feature requests from companies all the time (implement X! It'll save us from lots of complexity and internal support time!), but they don't want to pay for it. Redis also gets support requests from big companies (where employees have already exited or sold stock back or are out buying Teslas), and I get to answer their questions for free too. I'm really happy Redis is running your multibillion dollar company and I'm certainly happy you see no irony in asking for free support when your company is visibly hemorrhaging idle cash. Sometimes you just have to say http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fupm&defid=54....

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