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This sounds less like making money from open source alone and more about running a subscription video tutorial service. The guy from laracasts has lots of open

This sounds less like making money from open source alone and more about running a subscription video tutorial service. The guy from laracasts has lots of open source code on GitHub but it would be weird to say he's making money from open source. He's making money selling a subscription to a video tutorial website. The author has just swapped out Stripe or another payment gateway for GitHub Sponsors. I'm not sure how this is any different from Laracasts or any other tutorial site other than the fact that he does make some money directly from the open source, but it's not enough...

TAForObvReasons 4y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23618363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23618363 made the same observation 2 years ago: > The vast majority of developers don't make any significant money. The outliers that do use the platform as a general-purpose payment processor. They take donations, but they also sell things. The line between isn't terribly clear
outcoldman 4y ago
Even on the enterprise level, all the open source companies such as Elastic Search or MongoDB don't make money on "open-source", but enterprise subscriptions, which would include support and some guarantees on the product, including stupid acceptance of your PR for fixing some bugs. And Amazon, Microsoft, Google use their open source to bring customers to cloud or sell some other products. People don't like to pay for what is "free". Have you seen any street performance? The artists have to walk to every viewer and look them in the eye to ask for money, they have to keep some money in the hat in specific bills so people around kind of understand how much to pay, they have to keep their own viewers who definitely put money in the hat all the time, so others feel the pressure. That is the reason why I personally don't want to run any open source projects. I just don't like to ask people. I would never want to ask anybody to contribute, I don't want to find a way to make it profitable. Not saying that it is bad, I just feel so much pressure for asking people to do something. To help, to support, to try to sell something to them. I am running pretty much 2 companies with close source software. One is very successful, which pay my bills, another one is more like a moonlight project, that makes around $1k to $2k a month (currently contribute most of that to various foundations to support Ukraine). And for the last 5 years I got used to being ok for blame not to write any open source projects. I personally don't use much open source software myself. Not for the reasons I don't want to, just because I am ok to pay for quality. And I don't have time to review some libraries, when I can just write something in a day or two. I don't sell my software, I publish on Reddit, and other channels about something I do, run promotions, but don't talk to customers to sell anything. All my software is easy to download and try, and purchase without talking to me. But if you are my customers, I would be happy to help you.
- rglullis 4y ago
  If people can only get the software by buying it, you are pretty much "asking" them to do something. Just because you are not interacting with them does not mean you are not doing sales.
omnimus 4y ago
Not really AlpineJS and Livewire are both highly popular and people are paying him for maintaining it. He makes podcast and occasional videos but it all revolves around those two tools. He is diversifiing by making and selling new product - Alpine Components but again that revolves around software he makes. The Laracast guy will make videos about anything and the open source soft is mainly sideeffect of him being developer.

TAForObvReasons 4y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23618363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23618363 made the same observation 2 years ago: > The vast majority of developers don't make any significant money. The outliers that do use the platform as a general-purpose payment processor. They take donations, but they also sell things. The line between isn't terribly clear

outcoldman 4y ago

Even on the enterprise level, all the open source companies such as Elastic Search or MongoDB don't make money on "open-source", but enterprise subscriptions, which would include support and some guarantees on the product, including stupid acceptance of your PR for fixing some bugs. And Amazon, Microsoft, Google use their open source to bring customers to cloud or sell some other products. People don't like to pay for what is "free". Have you seen any street performance? The artists have to walk to every viewer and look them in the eye to ask for money, they have to keep some money in the hat in specific bills so people around kind of understand how much to pay, they have to keep their own viewers who definitely put money in the hat all the time, so others feel the pressure. That is the reason why I personally don't want to run any open source projects. I just don't like to ask people. I would never want to ask anybody to contribute, I don't want to find a way to make it profitable. Not saying that it is bad, I just feel so much pressure for asking people to do something. To help, to support, to try to sell something to them. I am running pretty much 2 companies with close source software. One is very successful, which pay my bills, another one is more like a moonlight project, that makes around $1k to $2k a month (currently contribute most of that to various foundations to support Ukraine). And for the last 5 years I got used to being ok for blame not to write any open source projects. I personally don't use much open source software myself. Not for the reasons I don't want to, just because I am ok to pay for quality. And I don't have time to review some libraries, when I can just write something in a day or two. I don't sell my software, I publish on Reddit, and other channels about something I do, run promotions, but don't talk to customers to sell anything. All my software is easy to download and try, and purchase without talking to me. But if you are my customers, I would be happy to help you.

rglullis 4y ago
If people can only get the software by buying it, you are pretty much "asking" them to do something. Just because you are not interacting with them does not mean you are not doing sales.

omnimus 4y ago

Not really AlpineJS and Livewire are both highly popular and people are paying him for maintaining it. He makes podcast and occasional videos but it all revolves around those two tools. He is diversifiing by making and selling new product - Alpine Components but again that revolves around software he makes. The Laracast guy will make videos about anything and the open source soft is mainly sideeffect of him being developer.