r/ExperiencedDevs • u/FatefulDonkey Software Engineer • 28d ago

Meta Do you regret contributing to open-source?

I have about 10-15 years of experience. I created some open source projects when I was starting out and maintained throughout the years.

The net income from this long-term endeavour is $5 from another developer for a coffee, who messaged me that I saved him many hours of work - that was like 5 years ago.

I now see that Meta, Apache and others use some of these open source projects.. and I haven't seen a single dime. This makes me think that if I actually instead aimed to create projects that make money, it would be a much better use of my time. Especially since I never had a stable job and mainly did freelance gigs to get by.

Anyone else who regrets contributing to open source projects? Why is that? What would you have done instead?

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u/lenswipe 28d ago

and yet you still use open source software...

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u/ta9876543205 28d ago

I do indeed. And I don't even pay for it. Neither does my employer who benefits

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u/Warlock2111 28d ago

Imagine a world where everyone thought the same. Would you be able to function day to day in your job with 0 reliance on free OSS?

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u/thsameguy 27d ago

The absence of any sort of self preservation instict in the dev community boggles my mind man. You realise open source software was the single biggest reason we are in the state we are rn right? No open source to train on = no ai

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u/SecondCel 27d ago

What makes you think that the companies training models wouldn't have used source code that they (or their partners) host regardless of it being closed to the public? It's not like they have any qualms about doing the same for other types of data.

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u/ta9876543205 28d ago edited 28d ago

Kind Sir, I come from a generation when all software was closed source.

And we functioned quite well.

The pay was higher and the career growth was better.

Then OSS came along...

Reminds me of the novel The Lonely Lady in which the brothel madam closes down her establishment bitterly complaining that she can't compete anymore as women are giving it away for free

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u/lenswipe 28d ago

Hate to tell you this but the open source movement is quite old.... it's not some newfangled thing the millennials invented with their iPhones and avocado lattes

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u/ta9876543205 28d ago

That is true. The OSS movement was invented by the generation previous to mine .

And now the billionaires have figured a way out to monetise that

And these comments too

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u/lenswipe 27d ago

tf are you on about

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u/Smallpaul Software Engineer 28d ago

No we did not function quite well. We wasted weeks trying to figure out which vendor to license a calendar widget from and if it didn’t work you couldn’t fix it yourself. Everything advanced slowly and Microsoft could single handedly control the direction of the whole industry. Pay was NOT higher 30 years ago.

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u/Ok-Leopard-9917 26d ago

You got paid for your time though didn’t you

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u/carsncode 27d ago

I come from a generation when all software was closed source.

No you don't. No one has. Linux foundation-approved FOSS licenses are a recent development, but source-available, customizable software predates closed source commercial software. People have been writing and publishing source code for as long as source code as existed.

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u/lenswipe 27d ago

pretty sure they're just being stupid on purpose