6 ms·

Most of the people writing OSS do it for fun/side project/to solve a problem, not for the money. Problems come if that peace of software gets popular, they get

by Milank 6y ago

Most of the people writing OSS do it for fun/side project/to solve a problem, not for the money. Problems come if that peace of software gets popular, they get a lot of bug reports, improvement suggestions/requests, emails, noise in general. And a person who wrote the software has a full time job, so the time available for OSS is limited. That person is probably well paid in it's current job, so the OSS has a long way to go in order to replace that income, meaning it's very hard to transfer from a regular job to maintaining and living from your OSS. And the most important thing - those people are pure engineers, that don't know/are not interested in business, marketing, making a product out of their software, etc.. practically anything besides coding. It's like advising a mason: "Hey man, you know how to build a building, why don't you build one and sell it? You can pay the rent with it." It's a bit more complicated than that. But nice article overall, good starting point for someone who wants to find out more on the topic.

alexellisuk 6y ago
I have first-hand experience of this with OpenFaaS and other projects and wrote-up about it here, if anyone is interested in some long-term experience - https://blog.alexellis.io/the-5-pressures-of-leadership/ https://blog.alexellis.io/the-5-pressures-of-leadership/
barrkel 6y ago
Most people who write OSS do it as employees for companies for whom OSS is a strategic asset.
- pabs3 6y ago
  This kind of situation is not evenly distributed. For example the Linux kernel is mostly like this, but lots of other things are not like this.
- pankajdoharey 6y ago
  I would say a lot of people yes but "Most" may not be accurate clearly there are more projects on github than there are companies which are funding OSS projects.
  - boogies 6y ago
    Are you implying that one company can't fund more than one project?
    - pankajdoharey 6y ago
      Nope even if one company funds 100 projects each we will still run out of companies that fund OSS projects, there are many more individual efforts some of them patreon funded but not all. And people have been writing OSS since 70's with or without funding.
  - michaelt 6y ago
    The results here are going to depend on if someone spending 1 hour a month on a project with 1 user, and someone spending 40 hours a week on a project with 10,000,000 users both count as 1 OSS developer.
    - pankajdoharey 6y ago
      True but I was referring to the ones who are not corporate funded but spent 20 Hours or so on OSS, all large OSS projects were dedicated personal projects for many yrs with a lot of users the funding may or may not be there, Before Industry realised Linux kernel is a strategic asset people were contributing patches and many many hours without funding.
- Milank 6y ago
  We are talking about OSS projects that "need to pay the rent". OSS projects that are created by companies as a strategic move are something completely different.
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  [citation needed] This isn't my experience--I've worked with hundreds of developers who do open source, and only a handful were paid in any way. I don't exactly look deeply into the finances of every open source project, but my own open source projects, I've paid to run. Now, I'm aware that my experience is anecdotal, so I'm not going to confidently say that you're wrong, but I'll say that the best evidence I have (which isn't very good) doesn't match your claim. If you want to persuade me, you'll have to provide better evidence than what I already have.
- rikroots 6y ago
  Do they? I don't. In fact when I was last employed (I'm now freelance, or at least trying to be freelance) I very much did not work on my OSS project, or use it in client work, because while I had verbal assurances that the company would not assert their rights, the contract I signed included an IP clause that was a little too broad for my liking. As to the OP, It would be nice if I could figure out a way to make my OSS project earn enough to cover my rent. I would be really happy if I could get it to pay its own rent - hosting the project's home page is not $free. (Obligatory spam of the project's home URL: https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/ https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/ )
  - wtracy 6y ago
    Not that this addresses your core complaints, but both GitHub and GitLab offer free website hosting through the Pages feature.
- wtracy 6y ago
  Most projects that get serious traction are written by employees of companies who treat OSS as a strategic asset. That doesn't say anything about the number of people who write OSS.
- clueless123 6y ago
  In my experience this is not 100% true. Many times you get involved on OSS to "scratch your own itch" be it a personal project from scratch or collaborating on somebody else OSS project by fixing/adding something that irks/needs you specifically.
pselbert 6y ago
You make an excellent point here—it takes a lot of effort to get a solo project (OSS or otherwise) to be profitable enough that can compete with a day job’s salary. As somebody that is monetizing OSS, making a supplanting my salary is my measurement of success. At that point I can focus on my product and my customers during core working hours.
- Milank 6y ago
  Golden handcuffs. Slowing the world's development since.. forever.
pmoriarty 6y ago
"those people are pure engineers, that don't know/are not interested in business, marketing, making a product out of their software, etc.. practically anything besides coding" Yeah, that's a serious problem, and one similar to ones that artists and musicians face. I've made a fair bit of art (paintings, drawings, sculptures) but except for one group exhibit in high school I've never bothered to exhibit it anywhere, sell it online, or show it to anyone apart from family members and a few friends (and even they haven't seen most of my art). It's just too much trouble. I'd like to make a living making art, and have considered creating an Etsy page or something, but have never gotten around to it. So I just keep making art for myself. I also make music, and have kept that mostly to myself for the same reason. I've uploaded a fraction of it to Soundcloud, but I don't advertise it in any way, so even finding it on Soundcloud would be almost impossible for someone if they didn't search for specific keywords that I've tagged my music with. Mostly I don't bother even uploading it, though. It's too much trouble to record, edit, name, upload, provide metadata to Soundcloud and find an image to go with the track. So I just tend to keep the music to myself. I've also written quite a bit of software over the years, and have open sourced some of it, and am a big believer in open source, but it's just too much trouble for me to package stuff nicely, write readmes for my software, and make sure the software is decoupled enough from my own environment to be useful/buildable for someone else, so a lot of it has just kind of rotted away on my hard drive for decades without anyone else even knowing of its existence. So I mostly just write this code for myself. Some people go all out to promote their software, music, or art, but that's just not me. For me the joy is in the creation, and the rest is just not important enough. Kudos to all those people who actually go to the trouble of open sourcing their code, release music to the public, or show their art. I know how much work just doing that can be, never mind trying to make a living at it. That said, if you are willing to go to the trouble, there are successful open source projects which manage to make money that you could model your own projects on.
- wishinghand 6y ago
  I'm envious a bit. The hard parts for you are the easiest parts for me. Uploading to Soundcloud is too easy, and sometimes I put stuff on there that's kind of embarrassing. Etsy page creation, Soundcloud metadata, readable READMEs... I wish those were my hardest problems.
joshstrange 6y ago
I have considered open sourcing projects before but decided against it due to not wanting to support it. I have a hard problem saying no or ignoring people and so little side-projects or proof-of-concepts that I have open sourced turned into more of a pain that they were worth. Example: I got a Eufy RoboVac 15C and I was in a homebridge-craze at the time I got it. So I found some code in python that was able to control the vacuum for the most part and so using that as my base I wrote a homebridge plugin in nodejs that would let you issue all the commands. Now homebridge on it's own is far from stable (IMHO, if it works for you then that's great but for me it would break every month or so randomly), then you throw Tuya into the mix, and a company that made some firmware changes to the vacuum and it's a house of cards. I was proud of myself for getting it all to work but in practice I run the vacuum on a timer and never futz with controlling it directly. I really just wanted to prove I could do it. To get it to play nice with homebridge I had to publish it on npm (2 libraries, one general purpose nodejs lib to control the vacuum and one that was the homebridge plugin that used the lib). Queue support requests... I easily spent 30+ hours trying to help people both on GH and over email (email was even harder for me to say no to). This was at a point where I wasn't even using homebridge at all, let alone the plugin. Maybe I'm just an idiot for not deprecating the repo or putting up a message but I felt obligated to help and then when I procrastinated helping it would just be this background sense of shame for abandoning it. Thankfully someone else, who apparently does use it, stepped up to fix some of the things that broke and has taken over most of the support-related things (which reminds me, I need to see about transferring the repo over to them fully) but I think that's generally the exception and not the rule. Bottom line publishing anything feels like I'm shackling myself to it which is not a feeling I like or enjoy which leads to me just putting less out there. Maybe I'm missing an obvious solution but I really don't like putting myself in that situation. I am 100% willing to hand over my work for free (as in, for projects that I have no intention of trying to monetize/purse) but I don't want to signup for future work. Is this just selfish or what?
- penagwin 6y ago
  Please, please, please still release your source if you don't mind! Especially for "random hacks" like a home brew bridge! You have no idea how many tiny repos I have used for reference with those types of projects! In many cases your code might be the only working example. You can put a big disclaimer in it, declare it a PoC, and just ignore issues if you'd like - the code doesn't even have to still be working, it's still cool and helpful!
soamv 6y ago
> Most of the people writing OSS do it for fun/side project/to solve a problem, not for the money. Not to pick on you personally, but this sort of assertion is often thrown around with no data. It's not even clear to me that it's one or the other. For me personally it was always a mixture of both -- there's a lot of fun but I wouldn't do it without the money. But that's kinda true for my non-OSS engineering work, too! > pure engineers I see what you're saying, but I think there is an element of "making a product" that goes into almost any new OSS project; there is an attraction of exploring the product space from a fresh start that is part of the motivation of many many new open source projects. (Also I think the notion that a "pure engineer" doesn't care about all those things is just wrong, but that's a whole other conversation.)
- osamagirl69 6y ago
  I am more on the hardware side where the economics are different. When I was younger I was largely motivated by trying to commercialize my projects (not just releasing the full design files under permissive license, but trying to use noncommercial license and selling kits or whatever) but as I got older the meger income I might make selling hobby kits on ebay is no longer an attraction and I am solidly in the camp of 'give it away for free, and if someone wants to commercialize it all the power to them'.
- crispyambulance 6y ago
  > ...this sort of assertion is often thrown around with no data. I think it's basically impossible to have "data" on why people work on OSS, on what their actual motivation is. All you're really going to get is anecdotal. There are good reasons to explore ideas and participate in projects that extend beyond making pocket change through clickbait.
- mindhash 6y ago
  I think there was a time, most people were doing it for fun but today most people do it for building profile, commercialising it or consulting around it. It offers a path to freedom. Though hard to productise OSS, it seems to work well for the other reasons. But technically what you are saying may be right. We mostly hear about commercial work because of marketing around it. The real fun problem solving projects are often found only when you need it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by Milank 6y ago

alexellisuk 6y ago

I have first-hand experience of this with OpenFaaS and other projects and wrote-up about it here, if anyone is interested in some long-term experience - https://blog.alexellis.io/the-5-pressures-of-leadership/ https://blog.alexellis.io/the-5-pressures-of-leadership/

barrkel 6y ago

Most people who write OSS do it as employees for companies for whom OSS is a strategic asset.

pabs3 6y ago
This kind of situation is not evenly distributed. For example the Linux kernel is mostly like this, but lots of other things are not like this.
pankajdoharey 6y ago
I would say a lot of people yes but "Most" may not be accurate clearly there are more projects on github than there are companies which are funding OSS projects.
- boogies 6y ago
  Are you implying that one company can't fund more than one project?
  - pankajdoharey 6y ago
    Nope even if one company funds 100 projects each we will still run out of companies that fund OSS projects, there are many more individual efforts some of them patreon funded but not all. And people have been writing OSS since 70's with or without funding.
- michaelt 6y ago
  The results here are going to depend on if someone spending 1 hour a month on a project with 1 user, and someone spending 40 hours a week on a project with 10,000,000 users both count as 1 OSS developer.
  - pankajdoharey 6y ago
    True but I was referring to the ones who are not corporate funded but spent 20 Hours or so on OSS, all large OSS projects were dedicated personal projects for many yrs with a lot of users the funding may or may not be there, Before Industry realised Linux kernel is a strategic asset people were contributing patches and many many hours without funding.
Milank 6y ago
We are talking about OSS projects that "need to pay the rent". OSS projects that are created by companies as a strategic move are something completely different.
kerkeslager 6y ago
[citation needed] This isn't my experience--I've worked with hundreds of developers who do open source, and only a handful were paid in any way. I don't exactly look deeply into the finances of every open source project, but my own open source projects, I've paid to run. Now, I'm aware that my experience is anecdotal, so I'm not going to confidently say that you're wrong, but I'll say that the best evidence I have (which isn't very good) doesn't match your claim. If you want to persuade me, you'll have to provide better evidence than what I already have.
rikroots 6y ago
Do they? I don't. In fact when I was last employed (I'm now freelance, or at least trying to be freelance) I very much did not work on my OSS project, or use it in client work, because while I had verbal assurances that the company would not assert their rights, the contract I signed included an IP clause that was a little too broad for my liking. As to the OP, It would be nice if I could figure out a way to make my OSS project earn enough to cover my rent. I would be really happy if I could get it to pay its own rent - hosting the project's home page is not $free. (Obligatory spam of the project's home URL: https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/ https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/ )
- wtracy 6y ago
  Not that this addresses your core complaints, but both GitHub and GitLab offer free website hosting through the Pages feature.
wtracy 6y ago
Most projects that get serious traction are written by employees of companies who treat OSS as a strategic asset. That doesn't say anything about the number of people who write OSS.
clueless123 6y ago
In my experience this is not 100% true. Many times you get involved on OSS to "scratch your own itch" be it a personal project from scratch or collaborating on somebody else OSS project by fixing/adding something that irks/needs you specifically.

pselbert 6y ago

You make an excellent point here—it takes a lot of effort to get a solo project (OSS or otherwise) to be profitable enough that can compete with a day job’s salary. As somebody that is monetizing OSS, making a supplanting my salary is my measurement of success. At that point I can focus on my product and my customers during core working hours.

Milank 6y ago
Golden handcuffs. Slowing the world's development since.. forever.

pmoriarty 6y ago

"those people are pure engineers, that don't know/are not interested in business, marketing, making a product out of their software, etc.. practically anything besides coding" Yeah, that's a serious problem, and one similar to ones that artists and musicians face. I've made a fair bit of art (paintings, drawings, sculptures) but except for one group exhibit in high school I've never bothered to exhibit it anywhere, sell it online, or show it to anyone apart from family members and a few friends (and even they haven't seen most of my art). It's just too much trouble. I'd like to make a living making art, and have considered creating an Etsy page or something, but have never gotten around to it. So I just keep making art for myself. I also make music, and have kept that mostly to myself for the same reason. I've uploaded a fraction of it to Soundcloud, but I don't advertise it in any way, so even finding it on Soundcloud would be almost impossible for someone if they didn't search for specific keywords that I've tagged my music with. Mostly I don't bother even uploading it, though. It's too much trouble to record, edit, name, upload, provide metadata to Soundcloud and find an image to go with the track. So I just tend to keep the music to myself. I've also written quite a bit of software over the years, and have open sourced some of it, and am a big believer in open source, but it's just too much trouble for me to package stuff nicely, write readmes for my software, and make sure the software is decoupled enough from my own environment to be useful/buildable for someone else, so a lot of it has just kind of rotted away on my hard drive for decades without anyone else even knowing of its existence. So I mostly just write this code for myself. Some people go all out to promote their software, music, or art, but that's just not me. For me the joy is in the creation, and the rest is just not important enough. Kudos to all those people who actually go to the trouble of open sourcing their code, release music to the public, or show their art. I know how much work just doing that can be, never mind trying to make a living at it. That said, if you are willing to go to the trouble, there are successful open source projects which manage to make money that you could model your own projects on.

wishinghand 6y ago
I'm envious a bit. The hard parts for you are the easiest parts for me. Uploading to Soundcloud is too easy, and sometimes I put stuff on there that's kind of embarrassing. Etsy page creation, Soundcloud metadata, readable READMEs... I wish those were my hardest problems.

joshstrange 6y ago

I have considered open sourcing projects before but decided against it due to not wanting to support it. I have a hard problem saying no or ignoring people and so little side-projects or proof-of-concepts that I have open sourced turned into more of a pain that they were worth. Example: I got a Eufy RoboVac 15C and I was in a homebridge-craze at the time I got it. So I found some code in python that was able to control the vacuum for the most part and so using that as my base I wrote a homebridge plugin in nodejs that would let you issue all the commands. Now homebridge on it's own is far from stable (IMHO, if it works for you then that's great but for me it would break every month or so randomly), then you throw Tuya into the mix, and a company that made some firmware changes to the vacuum and it's a house of cards. I was proud of myself for getting it all to work but in practice I run the vacuum on a timer and never futz with controlling it directly. I really just wanted to prove I could do it. To get it to play nice with homebridge I had to publish it on npm (2 libraries, one general purpose nodejs lib to control the vacuum and one that was the homebridge plugin that used the lib). Queue support requests... I easily spent 30+ hours trying to help people both on GH and over email (email was even harder for me to say no to). This was at a point where I wasn't even using homebridge at all, let alone the plugin. Maybe I'm just an idiot for not deprecating the repo or putting up a message but I felt obligated to help and then when I procrastinated helping it would just be this background sense of shame for abandoning it. Thankfully someone else, who apparently does use it, stepped up to fix some of the things that broke and has taken over most of the support-related things (which reminds me, I need to see about transferring the repo over to them fully) but I think that's generally the exception and not the rule. Bottom line publishing anything feels like I'm shackling myself to it which is not a feeling I like or enjoy which leads to me just putting less out there. Maybe I'm missing an obvious solution but I really don't like putting myself in that situation. I am 100% willing to hand over my work for free (as in, for projects that I have no intention of trying to monetize/purse) but I don't want to signup for future work. Is this just selfish or what?

penagwin 6y ago
Please, please, please still release your source if you don't mind! Especially for "random hacks" like a home brew bridge! You have no idea how many tiny repos I have used for reference with those types of projects! In many cases your code might be the only working example. You can put a big disclaimer in it, declare it a PoC, and just ignore issues if you'd like - the code doesn't even have to still be working, it's still cool and helpful!

soamv 6y ago

> Most of the people writing OSS do it for fun/side project/to solve a problem, not for the money. Not to pick on you personally, but this sort of assertion is often thrown around with no data. It's not even clear to me that it's one or the other. For me personally it was always a mixture of both -- there's a lot of fun but I wouldn't do it without the money. But that's kinda true for my non-OSS engineering work, too! > pure engineers I see what you're saying, but I think there is an element of "making a product" that goes into almost any new OSS project; there is an attraction of exploring the product space from a fresh start that is part of the motivation of many many new open source projects. (Also I think the notion that a "pure engineer" doesn't care about all those things is just wrong, but that's a whole other conversation.)

osamagirl69 6y ago
I am more on the hardware side where the economics are different. When I was younger I was largely motivated by trying to commercialize my projects (not just releasing the full design files under permissive license, but trying to use noncommercial license and selling kits or whatever) but as I got older the meger income I might make selling hobby kits on ebay is no longer an attraction and I am solidly in the camp of 'give it away for free, and if someone wants to commercialize it all the power to them'.
crispyambulance 6y ago
> ...this sort of assertion is often thrown around with no data. I think it's basically impossible to have "data" on why people work on OSS, on what their actual motivation is. All you're really going to get is anecdotal. There are good reasons to explore ideas and participate in projects that extend beyond making pocket change through clickbait.
mindhash 6y ago
I think there was a time, most people were doing it for fun but today most people do it for building profile, commercialising it or consulting around it. It offers a path to freedom. Though hard to productise OSS, it seems to work well for the other reasons. But technically what you are saying may be right. We mostly hear about commercial work because of marketing around it. The real fun problem solving projects are often found only when you need it.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]