hello world! 👋
This is my first #discuss thread and I want it to be on something relevant rather than "Which IDE color scheme does devs like?". This went a little bit lengthy than my usual articles but I think it's okay.
It’s been a while since I've written something here, but I don’t want to write articles for the sake of “keeping the blog alive”, screw that.
Last week, I came across an article "GitHub stars won’t pay your rent". If you haven't read that yet I'll give a TLDR; It is about how Kitze (author of Sizzy) turned his OSS project Sizzy into a profitable business.
What made me curious is the title "GitHub stars won’t pay your rent" and I think it is funny because it is true 😕.
Dear devs, we've been there. 99% of us literally received 0 (zero) amount of money doing open source projects.
This is because people misunderstand how open source works all the time, and we aren't any different.
If you want to make people pay for software that already exists, then the only realistic way is mild extortion, and that means a proprietary license.
But the whole idea of free software is that once the software exists, it "belongs" to everyone (in the sense that every single person on the planet is free to use it, inspect it, modify it, and share it). You can ask people to pay for it, but why would they? It's already "theirs", it already exists, paying for it can never be anything but a courtesy to anyone who already sank time into it. This is why donation-based projects are struggling: you're asking people to pay for something they already have.
However, when it comes to making people pay for software that doesn't exist yet, things look very different. Plenty of people and companies do, in fact, spend considerable amounts of money on making software exist that they need to exist. This is how the majority of serious open source projects get funded.
Take, for example, Firefox. Regardless of what the Mozilla Foundation's marketing copy says, it does not exist because a bunch of philanthropists decided they need to make the world a little better - the only reason the project is viable is because Google (and a few other companies) massively benefit from its existence, and hence pump substantial amounts of money into its development.
Or take Linux (the kernel, that is). Thousands of companies worldwide benefit from the existence of a free, tinkerable kernel, for all sorts of reasons: cloud hosting providers benefit because it makes their operation affordable for the masses, server hardware manufacturers benefit because it increases the customer surplus (money not spent on OS licenses can be spent on hardware instead), consultancy firms benefit because they can now sell support contracts for an OS that they can control but don't have to maintain themselves, research facilities benefit from not having to develop a custom kernel for their supercomputing clusters, etc. So all these entities help fund kernel development.
Another model is for companies to pay for desirable features, basically using their money to vote on the future direction of a project. Apart from the scope, this is essentially the same payment model though.
There are plenty of ways to get paid for your work, the proprietary model is just one of them.
Open source IS NOT A BUSINESS plan.
It is a DISTRIBUTION plan. You DISTRIBUTE using open source. You need to ATTACH A BUSINESS PLAN to your DISTRIBUTION plan.
However, because code IS the most valuable byproduct of a developer give away code is give away the MOST valuable asset. Is like a chef giving away the meals ie: Is not just the receipts is the full meal. Code is not just a description by mean of cheap building is the END product.
Why you will pay the chef if he already give you the food? And the way to have the food without the chef?
Open source is a very idiotic business plan WITHOUT a seriously extra advantage. In the case of single/small team of developers is the worst possible business to have: Everyone that is claimed to make money with open source have a BIG extra thing as side that is so valuable that the value of code become irrelevant.
Think like restaurant where all the food is free. 100% total free. BUT here is where the most popular actors are. Have a photo with them cost $$$$. In this convoluted scenario the popular actor are the BIG thing that this place have that is much more valuable than the food.
But now you are a street food seller and give the food for free. And in you place no one of notoriety visit and you don't have anything of value worth a damn.
Obviously you will say that guy is a idiot.
That is the same of open source: Apart of your code what exactly can you give? That TRULY is big enough?
4 weeks back, I published hoppscotch.io and I open sourced it on GitHub so everyone can use it and contribute. People loved it. The project received 15k+ stars. Became the #2 product of the day on Product Hunt. The analytics were going crazy. I couldn’t believe what was going on.
I'm closing in on 30 public, nontrivial non forked repos on GitHub. Since GitHub's inception, I've received a total of $200 in donations for my OSS projects and many job offers from people who are familiar with my work. I don't make money off OSS, and never have (at least not directly).
But I just. can't. stop.
I can't. I've tried suppressing the urge to create, but I just can't do it. Ideas, challenges, problems, unmet potential, are everywhere, and I can't unsee them. On many days I despair that I won't live long enough to build even a tiny fraction of the things I see in my mind. It's infuriating!
And so I do my best to keep my focus small. I have a full time job, so I try to keep my extracurricular coding down to at the very most 3 hours a day if I can, but my idea list just keeps on growing faster than I can keep up.
I keep thinking that maybe I'll calm down as I get older, but I started at 8, and I'm 23 now. If I had no financial pressure at all, I'd be doing this stuff all day. The only difference would be that I'd burn through my list faster.
But long story short, don't write OSS for money. Have a full time job and do OSS on the side.
If you want a heads up on my next projects, or just want to chat about the web, make sure to follow me on Twitter @liyasthomas 💙. If any of my projects helped you please consider making a small donation on PayPal.
Latest comments (96)
Well, I suppose I'll have to switch up my tactics. No more mailing my landlord USB drives.
I think people have to appreciate the amount of work that goes into open source projects and contribute or donate to them
Peer Production License is an interesting approach.
I feel the same way! I lie in bed twitching thinking about it sometimes :-)
It's a positive story for you that there is a sustainable way to continue on your path. Thanks for sharing.
This is really a nice discussion, I am quite like in this path, although I am not a pro-coder.
But I think the gist of doing OSS (even for a beginner) is you get to LEARN how to build things.
Also I recently heard about this hivefive.io
(What i think its like adding Ads on your Repository which slowly builds up revenue, that platform is yet to launch but I have some hopes from this)
Ads works. Amazon, Google etc are living proof. But I wonder how much page views would a freelance dev / an artist / a musician / YouTuber will have..!?
Anyways, if it helps somehow, it should be appreciated. I've an eye out for hivefive.io/
Free software always meant free as in freedom, not free as in beer.
Luckily, companies big and small are willing to pay 100k+ a year for competent developers who can build an ship products.
But I've always been skeptical of the 'get-lots-of-stars' model. Most people aren't heroes, and there is only so much branding developers can do before the market becomes saturated. There are millions of us, just like there are millions of artists and most people won't pay for most art. Just like there are millions of musicians, but most people won't pay for music.
A focus on the pragmatic, that someone is willing to pay for isn't that bad a gig. There are problems aplenty that need solving. In that sense developers are more engineers than they are artists. Most of us can't finance our well being like artists.
well said 💯
This line "money is not the mission, money only funds the mission."
Succinctly put. May I quote this?
Of course you can. Just give credits 😅
You might think about streaming your activity if you're ok about it and having people donating not to support, but to have fun.
It's so weird how much money can be spent not on things you already have as they're free, but on things that do not actually belong to you (like someone else's smile etc)
I would love to see someone else's smile. For an open source dev, people making a donation (support) big or small makes his day. Do you know what's better than seeing someone else's smile?
Its knowing: the reason behind smile is you ✨
Make a open source software and try to give a SaaS service as well. This model works. E.g. MongoDB.
Very much valuable for me :) thanks @liyasthomas
I'm happy for you 😄 and I hope you are a malayalee 🔥
Yes, how do you gues that.
Your second name "Prajapati" is a malayalam word. I'm from Thrissur.
Ok, I am from Uttar Pradesh, India
This is the number one thing I think about all day. I can never tell which ones are worth spending time on, since they all seem great to me. I'm 37, and I've been going since 13, so I hear you there. I for one welcome our AI overlords, given that some of us will likely be the ones who create and control them. That way it can do all the dumb stuff and I can finally focus on the fun/important stuff I need to do. If that doesn't happen, I'm not quite sure what I'll do. Wallow probly and keep plugging along in semi-futility. Maybe something I do will end up doing well. Good luck on all your projects.
I feel exactly the same. It's a creative urge, like writing music (which I also do, and I feel the passion for both is very similar).
I've received some donations, but nothing that could pay for anything significant, but I don't really see the donations as something that might eventually pay, but instead I see them as "thank you for the work", which is always appreciated.
However, I have seen some upsides, which are hard to put a dollar value on:
Learnt new things
Made great connections with smart people
A powerful sense that I'm contributing to humanity (even if it's in a relatively small way), rather than just being a consumer
There are probably other things that I've forgotten, but there's more value to OSS than just cash.
For some people who are young or people who already have relatively secure lives (like me). Reality starts hitting hard when there is something like medical emergency or a desire to owning a house to live.
So, you can't "pay your rent from open source".
I like the article and the topic. What I don't get is the relation between the title and the content of the article. Probably it's just me. Could you explain, please?
I just tried to express my opinions on what OSS means and few ways to get paid doing OSS. Sorry if there has been any confusion.
That hitted me hard!
That was the hard truth we always forget
Hey, My name is Elad. I'm the CMO at xscode.com
We are creating a licensing and billing platform for open-source developers.
We launched yesterday our pre-registration website and the platform should be ready in the beginning on November,
I would love to hear your thoughts about our mission and to see if it's a platform that you would use.
You can check it out here:
bit.ly/2mDZ3Cn
That's a great plan. Looking forward on its execution 🎉
Thanks, will let you know once we will be up and running