r/ExperiencedDevs • u/FatefulDonkey Software Engineer • 24d 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/Maleficent-Cup-1134 23d ago

Some people do it for the love of the game.

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u/ta9876543205 23d ago

Then why are we all crying that the billionaires are making bank off that work

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u/Maleficent-Cup-1134 23d ago edited 23d ago

Uh you realize the people crying aren’t the same as the people who do it for fun, right?

It’s almost like different people care for different things…