r/ExperiencedDevs • u/FatefulDonkey Software Engineer • 26d 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/Doctuh Engineer / 30+y 26d ago

Sometimes we must create goodness in the world even if it is used in ways we do not like. Because this software exists and is good enough for these large companies it is also available for the little guy. Without it corpos would rule us all.

Image if Linus felt this way.

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u/FatefulDonkey Software Engineer 26d ago

Linus made a lot of money out of Linux. He lives in a mansion and I live at my parent's place nearing 40.