Comment by 255kb
1 day ago
I’ll second this. It seems that a lot of people assume it’s possible (or easy?) to make a living from open-source projects.
It’s probably due to a few famous projects being massively successful (think Vue.js), but I believe it’s directly tied to the project's size (audience), the maintainers' activities (conferences, etc.), and the type of audience. This last point is important—individuals are more likely to donate, while companies often need months of convincing, and it usually doesn't work, or they expect their logo everywhere with analytics (CTR, etc.) to justify it, which is basically advertising.
I have a sizeable seven-year-old open-source project (Mockoon) and, over its lifetime, I’ve received low four figures in donations, which is awesome, but far from enough to make a living from it.
Now, I’m creating a cloud version of the software, which has started generating revenue. It’s a lot of work, but leveraging the open-source success and sell something seems like a safer path.
>> It seems that a lot of people assume it’s possible (or easy?) to make a living from open-source projects
Eh? The only people who think you can make a living from Open Source (without working for a corporate) has never bothered to try. The number who have done it is a rounding error from zero. It's quite literally the hardest way to make money in software.
>> individuals are more likely to donate, while companies often need months of convincing, and it usually doesn't work, or they expect their logo everywhere
Companies cannot donate. People make donations, not companies. The only way to get a person at a company to send you money is by sending them an invoice for pretty much anything. Since you're giving the code away for free, advertising is pretty much all what you've got left to sell.
Repeat after me - Donations are not a business model. It's a hobby model.
Hosting can work at small scale. But I can host your product for less than you can. So if you're popular I can just host your software, and siphon off a chunk of your market.