5 ms·

I think you're making the right decision. Open-source is extremely difficult to make even a living wage off of - the number of people who do is orders of magnit

I think you're making the right decision. Open-source is extremely difficult to make even a living wage off of - the number of people who do is orders of magnitude smaller than those who make a living off of commercial software.

lovelyviking 3y ago
>Open-source is extremely difficult to make even a living wage off of… So are you saying it’s even possible? I wish to learn at least one option to do it. Few is even better. How at all you can realistically make living this way? Ok, not living , just partial income. Ok not partial. Some income? I am not making fun of I honestly look some way . I understand that if you maintain 10 years some essential part of essential software project then people eventually come to you for consulting or will pay you to shift this part toward their requirements. But other then that? Like can you write useful free software program and really have some money from it ?
- throw10920 3y ago
  The main options that I'm aware of are: selling support (RedHat), donations (I can't recall examples but they do exist), open-core (GitLab), and paid hosting (WordPress). In the past, there was also the option of selling physical media (which the FSF did for GNU projects, for instance) but that's been killed by the Internet. All of these models are very hard to get working (e.g. the donations model requires that you have a very large number of people interested in your work who are generous with their money, kind of like Twitch streaming), but they can work. They're not an option for the majority of programmers, though.
- shwouchk 3y ago
  Joey Hess (https://joeyh.name/ https://joeyh.name/) did, at least partially. I remember him raising money to develop git annex.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
rubymamis 3y ago
It's definitely possible to make a decent living with FOSS software. One of the main contributors to my note-taking app is @bjorn[1] who developed the awesome Tiled editor[2] and managed to figure out a sustainable way to earn a living from donations/sponsorships. There are probably more instances of that. I tried to go the same route, but other than a $5 monthly payment on Patreaon (thank you awesome contributor!) I couldn't figure it out. I hate serving shitty Google ads. They are also not a stable source of income and the revenue is low in my case. It's time for me to move on. [1] https://github.com/bjorn https://github.com/bjorn [2] https://github.com/mapeditor/tiled https://github.com/mapeditor/tiled
- throw10920 3y ago
  Oh, yeah, it's totally possible - just do a HN search and you'll find people who are doing it (e.g. Andrew Kelley, the Zig designer - and he's making a programming language, which nobody will pay for in this day and age!). However, like being a social media "influencer" (e.g. Twitch streamer), it requires a lot of both hard work and luck, has a limited amount of "capacity", and isn't a viable source of income for most people.

lovelyviking 3y ago

>Open-source is extremely difficult to make even a living wage off of… So are you saying it’s even possible? I wish to learn at least one option to do it. Few is even better. How at all you can realistically make living this way? Ok, not living , just partial income. Ok not partial. Some income? I am not making fun of I honestly look some way . I understand that if you maintain 10 years some essential part of essential software project then people eventually come to you for consulting or will pay you to shift this part toward their requirements. But other then that? Like can you write useful free software program and really have some money from it ?

throw10920 3y ago
The main options that I'm aware of are: selling support (RedHat), donations (I can't recall examples but they do exist), open-core (GitLab), and paid hosting (WordPress). In the past, there was also the option of selling physical media (which the FSF did for GNU projects, for instance) but that's been killed by the Internet. All of these models are very hard to get working (e.g. the donations model requires that you have a very large number of people interested in your work who are generous with their money, kind of like Twitch streaming), but they can work. They're not an option for the majority of programmers, though.
shwouchk 3y ago
Joey Hess (https://joeyh.name/ https://joeyh.name/) did, at least partially. I remember him raising money to develop git annex.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

rubymamis 3y ago

It's definitely possible to make a decent living with FOSS software. One of the main contributors to my note-taking app is @bjorn[1] who developed the awesome Tiled editor[2] and managed to figure out a sustainable way to earn a living from donations/sponsorships. There are probably more instances of that. I tried to go the same route, but other than a $5 monthly payment on Patreaon (thank you awesome contributor!) I couldn't figure it out. I hate serving shitty Google ads. They are also not a stable source of income and the revenue is low in my case. It's time for me to move on. [1] https://github.com/bjorn https://github.com/bjorn [2] https://github.com/mapeditor/tiled https://github.com/mapeditor/tiled

throw10920 3y ago
Oh, yeah, it's totally possible - just do a HN search and you'll find people who are doing it (e.g. Andrew Kelley, the Zig designer - and he's making a programming language, which nobody will pay for in this day and age!). However, like being a social media "influencer" (e.g. Twitch streamer), it requires a lot of both hard work and luck, has a limited amount of "capacity", and isn't a viable source of income for most people.