There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

How is Open Source project work paid?

Forgive me but this part of the open source and foss confuses me. If you code and release an open source and free piece of software like say, a robust video player such as VLC, how is that dev being paid?

Because in my eyes (I’m not too privy to FOSS ins and outs)

I’m basically getting your software for free of no charge, it IS free as in free beer cos you’re not asking ME to pay it for so who is paying YOU?

Does it come via donations or wealthy corporations like Red Hat and Microsoft pay or fund open sourced projects that is given to the hard working developers of that OSS/FOSS project?

inlandempire , (edited )
@inlandempire@jlai.lu avatar

Most open source projects will have a donation page / link, so it relies on people feeling compelled to donate because the software provided is useful to them.

Lemmy for example has options for financially supporting its development. Some Lemmy instances also feature a link to a donation page to cover the hosting costs.

Some have an organisation behind it, like Firefox has the Mozilla Foundation to finance it. Actually it’s the other way around, see ahal’s comment below

The team behind VLC has a “for profit” branch that adapts the video software for companies, allowing them to also finance VLC’s development in addition to donations.

EABOD25 ,

Would “Freelance” be a good word for it?

krdo ,

I think consulting would be a better word

gedaliyah ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

Some of Lemmy development is/was paid by foundation funding.

ahal ,

The Firefox example is actually the reverse, Firefox funds the Mozilla Foundation. This is a case of an open source project successfully monetising through search referrals (mostly from Google).

inlandempire ,
@inlandempire@jlai.lu avatar

Oh wow thanks for the correction, I’ll edit my comment

MentallyExhausted ,

https://reddthat.com/pictrs/image/20f5f261-c4fa-4e92-a818-b673f6141b60.jpeg

palebluethought ,

Like others have mentioned, there are various options (donations/sponsorships/grants) that larger projects will generally have some of, but for smaller projects (99% of what’s out there, by project count if not usage), the answer is simply “it isn’t.” It’s done as a hobby, as a resume booster, or with the hope of eventually becoming big enough to hit one of those revenue streams.

EmilyIsTrans ,
@EmilyIsTrans@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I contribute and run some open source projects. Some projects receive sponsorships and contributions, some are backed by companies, a lot are just someone doing it on their own time, very few can actually meaningfully support the people working on them. Personally, I receive no money for mine.

tgxn ,
@tgxn@lemmy.tgxn.net avatar

Likewise, I run/host/contribute to several public projects and typically get $0 unless someone feels like throwing $20 my way. Happens very rarely, though. I feel like most FOSS projects started like this, where the devs are just trying to “scratch thier own itch”.

curbstickle ,

Had someone buy me a dinner once

Or maybe they just repurposed the gift card, I don’t know. But I enoyed the dinner all the same!

slazer2au ,

depends on the project. Some projects are spun out from major corporations. Others are one dude making a thing and it gets used everywhere and taken over by venture capital firms.

Some projects will have sponsorship, there are also government grants they can get, but I would say most comes from regular users doing reoccurring dontations.

oce ,
@oce@jlai.lu avatar

Some projects are spun out from major corporations.

This is most of the FOSS projects in data engineering and data science. They come from tech giants or some dudes who just left tech giants to create a FOSS tool with a paid managed version, and those may get bough back by other tech giants later.

Example:

Analytics and AI giant Databricks reportedly paid nearly $2 billion when it acquired Tabular in June, a startup that was only doing $1 million in annual recurring revenue, according to Bloomberg. That’s a pretty outrageous exit multiple, and it was purportedly fueled by a battle between Databricks and Snowflake.

Tabular had over $30 million in funding, backed by Altimeter Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Zetta Venture Partners, when it was acquired just three years after it was founded. Tabular’s valuation was tied to Apache Iceberg, a popular open source table format that the startup’s founders created while at Netflix. The startup quickly became an expensive pawn in the war between Databricks and Snowflake.https://techcrunch.com/…/databricks-rep…

Vinny_93 ,

FOSS is free, OSS doesn’t have to be. Very often open source software, of which the commercial fork is being maintained by a company, that company will profit from businesses using the software. Idk about VLC but Moodle, for instance, is open source and updates for it are based on a subscription model.

The license agreement for OSS will often state that you are free to use it in your own home, but if you start commercially using the software, they expect you to pay. Some open source projects can get resold by service providers this way to handle deployment of updates, provide support, et cetera.

Faresh ,

The f in foss is for free as in libre, not price. And I imagine it is used to avoid touching the topic of open source software vs libre software. So saying you can make money from one and not the other doesn’t make sense.

Vinny_93 ,

In my experience, the term FOSS as in FLOSS is only (incorrectly, as you pointed out) used for software that is free if charge.

But you are correct, the term says nothing about the pricing, they only say something about the licensing form.

skullgiver ,
@skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl avatar

It all starts out with people who make stuff for free, and sometimes they receive donations. There are also non-profit grants that can fund a few months here or there. Money is pooled in organisations, and those organisations pay out project members.

Most of Linux development is done by companies like Red Hat, Intel, AMD, Canonical, you name it. Plenty of volunteers, but not enough to make projects like these. There are also projects by big companies like Twitter and Facebook that get open sourced because it’ll get them goodwill and free patches from the community. Facebook is developing React regardless of its license so they may as well share it.

Smaller projects are just hobby projects most of the time. It’s “free” as in “mattress”, in that you should think twice before adding it, and don’t even think you’re entitled to help or free work.

Sometimes that goes wrong, like when left-pad got pulled, or when colors.jb pushed an update in protest, and billion dollar companies could suddenly no longer update their software because they used the free stuff Some Guy put out in their critical build chain. Or, as xkcd accuratelt depicted it: xkcd.com/2347/

thecheddarcheese ,

I’d assume it’s mostly donations

troed ,
@troed@fedia.io avatar

Lots of OSS is created by people who want to create something, and happily gives it away to others too.

The problem is when others start depending, and demanding, work from that person. There is no good solution to that problem at the moment.

kubok ,

Core developer of an open source software suite here. We make money by doing the following things:

  • We offer a free and open source community package that has the basics. However, we offer a number of professional packages that we offer yearly subscriptions for.
  • We host our software. We charge by the number of active users.
  • Custom development.
  • Paid support like migrations or troubleshooting. Also helping external developers develop custom modules.

This allows us enough income to develop the community part of the software.

khannie ,
@khannie@lemmy.world avatar

Our small company paid a prominent (of that specific driver) open source driver writer for prioritisation of some work more than once. All the code was GPL.

I know it’s only one data point but it’s one way.

KingThrillgore ,
@KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml avatar

Either by salary by hiring an engineer for a company, by issuance of grant, or by issuance of funds from donations via 1099 or similar.

SnokenKeekaGuard ,
@SnokenKeekaGuard@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Loads of donations for one. You ought to donate to some of your favourites too!

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •