Strategies for making a living from open-source projects

Making a living from Open Source is hard. Like many things, you have to invest the time first to make the worthwhile thing, then you can 'sell' it.

The difference with Open Source is that once 'the thing' is ready, it's also usually freely available. At that point, as we have seen, many individuals and businesses are not incentivised to part with cash for the thing.

The whole problem of funding for Open Source is a complex one and it's not something we're going to solve easily here.

Most folks I know in Open Source aren't making a living off the Open Source thing itself, but rather on adjacent services and products.

Oftentimes it's through consultancy, either directly related to the Open Source thing or not.

A classic example

Taylor Otwell, creator of the Laravel web application framework and founder of Laravel, LLC. He spent years building Laravel (the framework) up whilst working full-time as a developer.

He also used Laravel to build products to help other Laravel developers.

Those products are how Laravel makes money. In fact, it's those very products that have enabled him to set up Laravel, LLC, which now employs multiple engineers to focus on improving both the Laravel framework and its ecosystem of free and premium tools.

Arguably the most valuable piece in this whole situation is Laravel the framework. But the code itself isn't really the thing that has value; it's what it has enabled people to do.

The fact that this 'enabling' code is freely available to anyone is the very reason that it's become so popular and made Taylor into a millionaire. Because it's enabled him and thousands of others to build robust SaaS web applications rapidly.

While there are counter-examples where some Open Source library or app has become hugely popular and captured a very appreciative audience who are more than happy to sponsor it, this is by far the exception and not the rule.

My experience

My own personal Open Source journey is very different. I believe that starts with the popularity of the specific things that I've built.

Laravel is popular because it's high quality, and quite general-purpose. Something low quality and very niche isn't going to become popular easily.

I always strive to build high quality solutions, but making something general-purpose is hard, either because there are already many competing solutions out there or because the problem it will solve is a complex one, so it requires investing a lot of time.

That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, but just that staying motivated to get something finished is harder.

One proxy for popularity we can look at is usage/downloads. The combined downloads of all my packages is somewhere around 300k. That suggests a sizable enough user base of people and businesses who are, to a certain degree, 'dependent' on my work.

But it's nowhere near the 300 million downloads that Laravel has.

While the tools I've built are clearly useful, they're probably not enablers in the same way as something like Laravel is. They're tools and they make people's jobs (and hopefully lives) easier, but they're not unlocking copious amounts of potential value for them.

Still, right now, I receive approximately $65/month in sponsorships for all my work, which I suspect even in the wide world of Open Source, is actually quite a lot.

While I appreciate every single penny and dime, the reality is I couldn't possibly justify spending all of my time supporting or improving my Open Source projects just yet.

(Of course, I do spend many hours and days working on my projects... in between other work. So that time comes at the expense of other pursuits.)

I'm taking consultancy work and also building paid products, but that's a risky investment too. And it comes with its own challenges: once you've got paying customers, your focus shifts towards supporting them directly, pushing your Open Source projects down the list of priorities.

So how do we change this situation?

Sponsorships with benefits

There are a few examples of folks doing this really well. One that sticks in my mind is from a few years ago when Caleb Porzio (inventor of Laravel Livewire) released a package called Sushi as sponsorware.

He wrote about the experience later, sharing his thinking and process.

This was enabled by GitHub Sponsors' ability to make a private repo accessible only to sponsors.

What I liked about this was that he tested the waters before making the package available by sharing a slick, brief video of how it worked. That way folks could immediately see the value. Then when it came time, they were clearly more than happy to part with their cash to get exclusive access to this powerful new thing.

I'm trying this more myself, getting folks excited and maybe teasing them a little with just glimpses of the thing so they get to see the value.

This is straight up Marketing 101: show people what they've been missing in their life, show them how good it will be when they get it, make it scarce to create demand and then put a till/ticket booth in front of them to restrict access to only those who pay.

Some Open Source purists will dislike this approach. But there's nothing wrong with this at all. While we may not always like it, this is the way the world works. And if it enables you to keep on building awesome, useful tools, I say all the more to you!

Another model is to offer sideline benefits. GitHub Sponsors even suggests this when creating tiers, but you're not limited to doing this just via GitHub Sponsors!

Basically it comes down to giving your sponsors more than just access to the code or the heartwarming feeling of knowing they are doing the right thing; if you can give them something that they can get real, tangible benefits from right away, that could be a huge incentive.

It could be as simple as:

• A shoutout on social media.
• A mention in a newsletter.
• Some personalised gift.
• Exclusive access to some content or community, e.g. a video course or a private Discord.

If you can make it something that folks will see real value in but that doesn't require a huge amount of effort or investment on your part, it could be just the ticket to unlock more sponsorships, getting you closer to making your open source work earning you a living.