I spent the first 10 years of my career working on and consulting with the open source CMS Plone. Consulting paid the bills. There were occasional paid projects

I spent the first 10 years of my career working on and consulting with the open source CMS Plone. Consulting paid the bills. There were occasional paid projects for specific improvements to the core software, though mostly that was done in my own time. Contributing helped build up my skills and reputation which helped landing consulting contracts. It was pretty awesome. For most of the time I was able to live somewhere fairly affordable and earn a comfortable income (though a long way from SV money.) I still miss that community and meeting up with them at sprints and conferences around the world.