[Disclaimer: that happened in France, not sure it applies in all countries] A friend of mine is a freelance worker, getting paid in public grants for doing 100%

[Disclaimer: that happened in France, not sure it applies in all countries] A friend of mine is a freelance worker, getting paid in public grants for doing 100% OSS dev for medical software. He has a skill that I have not: he spends 50% of his time filling forms, making proposals and hunting grants that often fail. The ones that succeed, however, pay him several months of time. There are public funds out there, in France and in EU, at least. Getting them require a bit of networking (you usually need to be back up by a partner either a lab, a company or an institution) a lot of paperwork but it allows to get financed in a way that charity or donations will have a hard time achieving.