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Basically your only options to get paid to write free software is either to work for a company that develops it (say, Mozilla or Red Hat for instance), create y
by simias 6y ago
Basically your only options to get paid to write free software is either to work for a company that develops it (say, Mozilla or Red Hat for instance), create your own company and make your software open or manage to get donors/sponsors (by far the hardest and less reliable method since it can come and go very quickly).
Getting paid for open source software is like becoming a successful musician, from the outside it's easy to only see the few "superstars" who make bank but for every one of them you have thousands of people for whom it'll never be their main source of income.
- rhn_mk1 6y agoThe first path is the only way I ever got hard cash for open source. There are plenty companies that create only or mostly open source work in addition to the 2 mentioned: Igalia, Linaro, Collabora, Intel, AMD, Endless, SuSE, to name a few. Some scientific research is happening in the open source manner as well. While none of my stuff made outside a contract ever yielded money, I also never made it a goal.
- AlchemistCamp 6y agoAnother option I see a lot is to create a consultancy that gains prominence due to its open source work. Formidable Labs, Thoughtbot and Plataformatec are good examples of this.