> But the question is how do you sustain yourself while working fulltime on building/maintaining open source software One thing I would suggest, is thinking ab

> But the question is how do you sustain yourself while working fulltime on building/maintaining open source software One thing I would suggest, is thinking about what's acceptable to you ? At the risk of summarizing what's been said already : 1) Get donations 2) Build some form of open source business (consulting, or open-core) 3) Find a business that will pay you to work some part of your time on open source 4) Find another work and do open source on the side I think that it's very easy to fall into the 1) trap. In many ways, it probably aligns the most with the values of open source which you seem to care about, but except for a handful of people, this is clearly unsustainable and a road to sadness. And all the various efforts that I've seen over the last 20 years to "improve" this situation have failed. Solution 2) is pretty popular around here, for obvious reasons. Especially on the "open core" side, it tries to find an equilibrium point between open source and making money. While I'm sure there are many successful examples, there's also a pretty big tension between the two sides on terms of ideals, and they may not define what's success the same way. You may not enjoy a successful exit. Which brings the last 2 solutions which are pretty similar. One thing I'd say is that in general, there's a lot of demand for software engineers. Many fields have needs for them (a lot of them outside the software industry) and, to keep this short, you probably have options to find something that you can accept (you may not want to work at Oracle !). In my case, I've been taking care of a macOS screensaver[1] for a couple of years now. Since I didn't start the project, I've always felt bad about asking for donations, but a few users insisted, so I've added a small donate button. Despite the stars and downloads, the donations are far from even covering my expresso addiction ;) But I never expected otherwise. And sure, I could make the donation thing more prominent, some may even say put a button in the preference panel of the screensaver. I'm not sure it would move the needle by that much, and it's probably not worth the extra guilt I'd feel about asking for those. So in my case, I do freelance engineering jobs, surprisingly completely unrelated to the insanely niche field of macOS screensavers ! I also try to work on (unrelated) iOS apps for myself, although my expectations on that are mild, it's not an easy path. But I do have control of my time, and I enjoy being able to keep adding new features to Aerial (there's weather in the latest betas !), although that effort tends to come in bursts depending on my free time. And although it's a burden, I've even taken to "enjoy" doing support, which I certainly wouldn't have expected ! [1]: https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial