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„open source developers work for pennies on the dollar. It is near impossible to make a living contributing to open source“ Literally thousands of developers a

„open source developers work for pennies on the dollar. It is near impossible to make a living contributing to open source“ Literally thousands of developers at Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical, Intel, IBM, Microsoft, working full time, fully paid on upstream projects, would slightly disagree. I’m not saying that every F/OSS developer makes a lot of money, but I oppose the notion that it is “near impossible” to do so. [disclaimer: I work at Red Hat since 14 years as EMEA Evangelist]

Aearnus 7y ago
Getting into a position like that requires an incredible amount of luck. It's very much a "right time, right place, right project" sort of ordeal. It just isn't reality for the majority of developers.
zaarn 7y ago
Alright, so how do I get hired part-time or full-time to work on my own pet FOSS projects?
- vertex-four 7y ago
  Find a company that uses it and wants to see it continuing to be developed in a way that works for them, and ask for them to employ you.
  - Crinus 7y ago
    So they get all the benefits of the project while i get a regular flat salary? Why not just work as a regular programmer regardless of what i work on is FOSS instead and keep my own projects under my control for myself?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - vertex-four 7y ago
      Sure, you can do that! I was answering the person's question, in which they wanted to get paid for developing their FOSS.
      - Crinus 7y ago
        The "i" in my comment doesn't refer to me specifically, it is like the "royal you" but for a single person (not sure if there is a name for it).
    - masukomi 7y ago
      I think you misunderstand how this open source thing works. If a company pays you to work on an open source project the company doesn't get "control" of the project. The project is still open source and "controlled" by its maintainers. The company doesn't get to choose what features get included. They may get to choose what features they let you work on during your paid hours, but it's still within the subset of features that are desired / allowed by the maintainers. So, you still have control, you just get to spend more time working on it. If they want to take it in another direction that you don't want then either they can pay someone else to do it _or_ you can choose to fork your own project and have a version with the behaviors they want and maintain the original version with the behaviors you want. If you've picked a company that's well aligned with the project then them paying you to work on the thing is generally the same as you working on what you want to work on, with maybe some features more highly prioritized that would otherwise be.
    - em-bee 7y ago
      because working 5 hours a week on your pet project vs working 40 hours on it is a big difference. if the project is under a Free Software license, who cares who actually owns the copyright? you can still use the code. sure, ownership does make some difference, but that's a tradeoff i am willing to make. also, if you start the project on your own and get hired by a company later, they will only own the portion of the code that you wrote after you joined them. you still own everything you created before that point, so if they want to do anything with the code that violates the license, they still have to ask your permission, and if you don't agree, you can still jump ship at that point, and you are no worse off than before taking the job.
- ossworkerrights 7y ago
  1% chance you can, and even if you, your “sponsor” will be earning far higher profits off of your work.
ossworkerrights 7y ago
Literally all of those are workers, while some would like to live a life of independent developers. I dont understand why some of you defend making “free” software which mainly benefits large corporations, while you work 9 to 5 jobs. It is near impossible to make money off of oss as an indie. Working for someone else that makes billions off it and pays you near nothing, doesnt count.

Aearnus 7y ago

Getting into a position like that requires an incredible amount of luck. It's very much a "right time, right place, right project" sort of ordeal. It just isn't reality for the majority of developers.

zaarn 7y ago

Alright, so how do I get hired part-time or full-time to work on my own pet FOSS projects?

vertex-four 7y ago
Find a company that uses it and wants to see it continuing to be developed in a way that works for them, and ask for them to employ you.
- Crinus 7y ago
  So they get all the benefits of the project while i get a regular flat salary? Why not just work as a regular programmer regardless of what i work on is FOSS instead and keep my own projects under my control for myself?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - vertex-four 7y ago
    Sure, you can do that! I was answering the person's question, in which they wanted to get paid for developing their FOSS.
    - Crinus 7y ago
      The "i" in my comment doesn't refer to me specifically, it is like the "royal you" but for a single person (not sure if there is a name for it).
  - masukomi 7y ago
    I think you misunderstand how this open source thing works. If a company pays you to work on an open source project the company doesn't get "control" of the project. The project is still open source and "controlled" by its maintainers. The company doesn't get to choose what features get included. They may get to choose what features they let you work on during your paid hours, but it's still within the subset of features that are desired / allowed by the maintainers. So, you still have control, you just get to spend more time working on it. If they want to take it in another direction that you don't want then either they can pay someone else to do it _or_ you can choose to fork your own project and have a version with the behaviors they want and maintain the original version with the behaviors you want. If you've picked a company that's well aligned with the project then them paying you to work on the thing is generally the same as you working on what you want to work on, with maybe some features more highly prioritized that would otherwise be.
  - em-bee 7y ago
    because working 5 hours a week on your pet project vs working 40 hours on it is a big difference. if the project is under a Free Software license, who cares who actually owns the copyright? you can still use the code. sure, ownership does make some difference, but that's a tradeoff i am willing to make. also, if you start the project on your own and get hired by a company later, they will only own the portion of the code that you wrote after you joined them. you still own everything you created before that point, so if they want to do anything with the code that violates the license, they still have to ask your permission, and if you don't agree, you can still jump ship at that point, and you are no worse off than before taking the job.
ossworkerrights 7y ago
1% chance you can, and even if you, your “sponsor” will be earning far higher profits off of your work.

ossworkerrights 7y ago

Literally all of those are workers, while some would like to live a life of independent developers. I dont understand why some of you defend making “free” software which mainly benefits large corporations, while you work 9 to 5 jobs. It is near impossible to make money off of oss as an indie. Working for someone else that makes billions off it and pays you near nothing, doesnt count.