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Ask HN: Any programmers making a living off of GitHub Sponsors and/or Patreon?

27 points by brundolf 6y ago

Are you or do you know of anyone who is doing this? Is it possible?

asddubs 6y ago
https://www.patreon.com/marcan https://www.patreon.com/marcan marcan is pretty close to full time for his asahi linux project. but he's also had a high profile (at least comparatively speaking) for ages now. it's pretty rare from what I can tell
Otek 6y ago
Sindre is an example. But I agree with @asddubs. It's pretty rare. https://github.com/sindresorhus https://github.com/sindresorhus
bunya017 6y ago
Evan You(the creator of Vue Js) does, he pulls in $150k+. https://www.patreon.com/evanyou https://www.patreon.com/evanyou
- cosmodisk 6y ago
  He probably pulls 500k+ from the whole ecosystem,but the fact that such a popular product as Vue JS can only bring in $150K in support is a reality check.
  - 1_player 6y ago
    Is it really? The guy is making a living thanks to his own personal project and it's bad he's not a millionaire, especially since you note his revenue might not be limited to his Patreon only? He might earn much more in the golden handcuffs of a FAANG, but his is a pretty incredible scenario by all metrics, especially if you consider the reality of the whole job market, not the SV niche making millions a year working at Google & co.
    - kohanz 6y ago
      I suppose it depends on how you look at it. Is it a good living? Yes. Is it commensurate with the value Evan has helped create through Vue.js? Not even close. But that's kind of the deal with open source, isn't it?
    - cosmodisk 6y ago
      Don't get me wrong, I don't equate $150K to peanuts, far from it,but my point is that if a project of such success brings this much,what chances people have with smaller projects that are good but nowhere near to Vue JS popularity.
  - yagizdegirmenci 6y ago
    He also has +150 sponsors on GitHub, but it doesn't changes the reality that a software engineer at his level can cut of a deal from any FAANG company for a Staff SWE role, which will be probably between 450-700K/year band.
- PaulWaldman 6y ago
  As a comparision, these are the top Patreon earners as of Dec. 2020. They range from $190M to $2MM per year. https://blog.patreon.com/top-patreon-creators https://blog.patreon.com/top-patreon-creators
makison 6y ago
Yeah, haven't followed him in a while, but listened to his podcasts quite a lot few years ago. Really cool guy. https://calebporzio.com/i-just-hit-dollar-100000yr-on-github-sponsors-heres-how-i-did-it https://calebporzio.com/i-just-hit-dollar-100000yr-on-github...
stevekemp 6y ago
I know a lot of people who have projects with 500-5000 stars and zero sponsors. Realistically the prospect of living off open-source development on github is as likely as living on sales as a book author. It happens, but it doesn't happen easily or often. If you run a super-popular project you might pickup a sponsor or two, but it seems that the odds are low.
kdtsh 6y ago
Patrick Volkerding, BDFL of Slackware, must be fairly close (or at least I hope he is). He started a Patreon late last year which has built up to a steady monthly stream of cash.
cheeseblubber 6y ago
I know a lot of open source project maintainers. Most of the sponsorships are negligible. The ones that have a bit more sponsorships tend to offer some sort of priority support. But even that is very difficult. I also maintain an open source project with 4k stars but we didn’t even bother with the sponsorship path and decided to monetize by charging for a hosted version. For reference https://github.com/papercups-io/papercups https://github.com/papercups-io/papercups
cpach 6y ago
I’m certain it’s possible. But not an easy goal to reach.
lasagnaphil 6y ago
Omar Cornut, who's a full time developer of dear imgui (https://github.com/ocornut/imgui https://github.com/ocornut/imgui), an immediate-mode UI library primarily used to create content-creation and debug/visualization tools. He was using Patreon until the end of 2019, but has actually removed it since he already got so much corporate sponsors over the years (His platinum sponsors right now are Blizzard, Google, Nvidia, and Ubisoft... enough said.) And he wholeheartedly deserves all the money, since his UI library is just so monumentally important for anyone doing 3D graphics or gamedev.
- cpach 6y ago
  Cool! What is it about that library that made it stand out compared to other libraries in the same space?
  - kejaed 6y ago
    The novel feature for this is the Immediate Mode GUI paradigm https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/wiki#about-the-imgui-paradigm https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/wiki#about-the-imgui-paradi...
bwh2 6y ago
The book Working In Public is a good resource for learning more about how open source developers fund their work through sponsors, consulting, etc.

27 points by brundolf 6y ago

Are you or do you know of anyone who is doing this? Is it possible?

https://www.patreon.com/marcan https://www.patreon.com/marcan marcan is pretty close to full time for his asahi linux project. but he's also had a high profile (at least comparatively speaking) for ages now. it's pretty rare from what I can tell

Otek 6y ago

Sindre is an example. But I agree with @asddubs. It's pretty rare. https://github.com/sindresorhus https://github.com/sindresorhus

bunya017 6y ago

Evan You(the creator of Vue Js) does, he pulls in $150k+. https://www.patreon.com/evanyou https://www.patreon.com/evanyou

cosmodisk 6y ago
He probably pulls 500k+ from the whole ecosystem,but the fact that such a popular product as Vue JS can only bring in $150K in support is a reality check.
- 1_player 6y ago
  Is it really? The guy is making a living thanks to his own personal project and it's bad he's not a millionaire, especially since you note his revenue might not be limited to his Patreon only? He might earn much more in the golden handcuffs of a FAANG, but his is a pretty incredible scenario by all metrics, especially if you consider the reality of the whole job market, not the SV niche making millions a year working at Google & co.
  - kohanz 6y ago
    I suppose it depends on how you look at it. Is it a good living? Yes. Is it commensurate with the value Evan has helped create through Vue.js? Not even close. But that's kind of the deal with open source, isn't it?
  - cosmodisk 6y ago
    Don't get me wrong, I don't equate $150K to peanuts, far from it,but my point is that if a project of such success brings this much,what chances people have with smaller projects that are good but nowhere near to Vue JS popularity.
- yagizdegirmenci 6y ago
  He also has +150 sponsors on GitHub, but it doesn't changes the reality that a software engineer at his level can cut of a deal from any FAANG company for a Staff SWE role, which will be probably between 450-700K/year band.
PaulWaldman 6y ago
As a comparision, these are the top Patreon earners as of Dec. 2020. They range from $190M to $2MM per year. https://blog.patreon.com/top-patreon-creators https://blog.patreon.com/top-patreon-creators

makison 6y ago

Yeah, haven't followed him in a while, but listened to his podcasts quite a lot few years ago. Really cool guy. https://calebporzio.com/i-just-hit-dollar-100000yr-on-github-sponsors-heres-how-i-did-it https://calebporzio.com/i-just-hit-dollar-100000yr-on-github...

stevekemp 6y ago

I know a lot of people who have projects with 500-5000 stars and zero sponsors. Realistically the prospect of living off open-source development on github is as likely as living on sales as a book author. It happens, but it doesn't happen easily or often. If you run a super-popular project you might pickup a sponsor or two, but it seems that the odds are low.

kdtsh 6y ago

Patrick Volkerding, BDFL of Slackware, must be fairly close (or at least I hope he is). He started a Patreon late last year which has built up to a steady monthly stream of cash.

cheeseblubber 6y ago

I know a lot of open source project maintainers. Most of the sponsorships are negligible. The ones that have a bit more sponsorships tend to offer some sort of priority support. But even that is very difficult. I also maintain an open source project with 4k stars but we didn’t even bother with the sponsorship path and decided to monetize by charging for a hosted version. For reference https://github.com/papercups-io/papercups https://github.com/papercups-io/papercups

cpach 6y ago

I’m certain it’s possible. But not an easy goal to reach.

lasagnaphil 6y ago

Omar Cornut, who's a full time developer of dear imgui (https://github.com/ocornut/imgui https://github.com/ocornut/imgui), an immediate-mode UI library primarily used to create content-creation and debug/visualization tools. He was using Patreon until the end of 2019, but has actually removed it since he already got so much corporate sponsors over the years (His platinum sponsors right now are Blizzard, Google, Nvidia, and Ubisoft... enough said.) And he wholeheartedly deserves all the money, since his UI library is just so monumentally important for anyone doing 3D graphics or gamedev.

cpach 6y ago
Cool! What is it about that library that made it stand out compared to other libraries in the same space?
- kejaed 6y ago
  The novel feature for this is the Immediate Mode GUI paradigm https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/wiki#about-the-imgui-paradigm https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/wiki#about-the-imgui-paradi...

bwh2 6y ago

The book Working In Public is a good resource for learning more about how open source developers fund their work through sponsors, consulting, etc.