I was offered a donation once. It turned out to be some kind of scammy new crypto coin that someone was trying to push. That was a very sad low. Besides that, I

I was offered a donation once. It turned out to be some kind of scammy new crypto coin that someone was trying to push. That was a very sad low. Besides that, I got a $10 donation of real money once. I treat open source as just a hobby, I'd love for it to be something more but analyzing the situation it's not very realistic. Read this amazing article on how much money Open Source makes: https://staltz.com/software-below-the-poverty-line.html https://staltz.com/software-below-the-poverty-line.html The best funded JS open source project, Vue.js, receives $16k/month[1]. That's a single-developer level of income in SV. The fact that TechCrunch, who regularly covers multi-million deals and CEOs making millions, says that "the revenues can be outsized" with these numbers is ingenuous at best: https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/23/open-source-sustainability/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/23/open-source-sustainability... So you have few realistic options: - Save enough money to not need to work again (FIRE - Financial Independence, Retire Early, etc). - Live very cheap, which could be a flip side of FIRE. Be ready to move to Thailand and other cheap countries. - Work on open source on the weekends or after work. Alternate working N months/years and then doing OSS M years. - Do consulting as a part time job and open source. If you play your cards right you might be able to join both consulting and OSS somehow. - Find the companies that do open source and apply for jobs there. Not so many options, but it's realistic.