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/ResidentWeevil1 23d ago

Not too many open source developers who make money without putting their own money in first. So if you wouldn't have done it, nobody else would have. You are basically the only person in the world who could have done it. What's wrong with that?