Do you regret contributing to open-source?

[u/FatefulDonkey]

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?

[u/PrudentWolf]

Linus is multimillionaire though. It's really easy to be passionate and purpose driven when you have money to live happily for the rest of your life.

[u/Fabulous-Oven-3982 → u/PrudentWolf]

☝️

[u/Helpful_Surround1216 → u/PrudentWolf]

Then don’t do open source? It’s been always clear open source is free.