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With open source, the incentives from a maintainers view might look a lot different than what you would think. A friend of mine has a very popular JS framework

With open source, the incentives from a maintainers view might look a lot different than what you would think. A friend of mine has a very popular JS framework out there, gets about 500k downloads a week off of NPM. There are lots of user requests that he just outright ignores. He doesn't even care about his stats, or trying to "compete" with another more popular framework- to him its just more headaches. He built what he wanted, pushed it out for the world to use, and plenty of people did, enough that even 10x'ing that number is unlikely to really burnish the resume any further. He even tried to make it a full time job, but he found the Patreon model just way too much begging and inconsistent. Offering a support contract, a few people bit, but not enough that he could really hire people so he could offer 24/7/365 support that that implies. So he refactors, adds features he wants, and tells everyone to go Fork themselves if they whine about their pet feature not getting implemented. Of course PRs are welcome, and its actually more of a community based project now, but he has retained BDFL status for the core of it.

andrewmcwatters 4y ago
Ultimately, I found that basically no one makes any money off Patreon or GitHub Sponsors. I mean statistically. Sure there are big names you and I know of out there, but the income of OnlyFans creators is orders of magnitude higher. But of course, I doubt they'd ever share the distribution of income for users off those platforms. You'd realize there's no point.
- throwaway2037 4y ago
  Exactly right. This is the superstar phenomenon of single commercial actors on the Internet -- YouTubers, Open Source product owners, self-publishers, etc. Far less than 1% "make it big", then eventually v/blog about how to be successful just like them in five easy steps. Many great bloggers eventually write that awful post about "writing is the best skill to have". Barf. I do agree about OnlyFans. Due to social constraints, it does seem easier to make "middle class" money than YouTubing/OpenSourcing/Self-Publishing.

andrewmcwatters 4y ago

Ultimately, I found that basically no one makes any money off Patreon or GitHub Sponsors. I mean statistically. Sure there are big names you and I know of out there, but the income of OnlyFans creators is orders of magnitude higher. But of course, I doubt they'd ever share the distribution of income for users off those platforms. You'd realize there's no point.

throwaway2037 4y ago
Exactly right. This is the superstar phenomenon of single commercial actors on the Internet -- YouTubers, Open Source product owners, self-publishers, etc. Far less than 1% "make it big", then eventually v/blog about how to be successful just like them in five easy steps. Many great bloggers eventually write that awful post about "writing is the best skill to have". Barf. I do agree about OnlyFans. Due to social constraints, it does seem easier to make "middle class" money than YouTubing/OpenSourcing/Self-Publishing.