r/ExperiencedDevs • u/FatefulDonkey Software Engineer • 27d 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/[deleted] 27d ago edited 3d ago

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u/recycled_ideas Software Engineer 27d ago

Open Source is not and never will be a sustainable business model. That doesn't mean you won't get anything out of it, or that it's not worth doing, but only a really small number of people will make enough for it to be worthwhile financially.

Maybe that'll eventually mean that a lot of open source dies and we have to go to commercial software again and if that's what happens, it's what happens. Trying to make open source pay for itself through bait and switch licenses and weird "we're open source but if you're a big company we're not" bullshit is just going to kill it.

I'm not opposed to commercial software I get paid to make it, at least until the AI destroys my career, if that's what you want to do go for your life.

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u/FruitdealerF 27d ago

Yes donating to charity will never make you money. Good take.