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I'm going to work full-time on free software
- mr_puzzled 8y agoThat's amazing, best of luck. Will the revenue info be public? Are the current subscriptions close to replacing what you were making at your fulltime job? Hopefully sustainability is not far off and I look forward to the day when you can hire other prominent contributors such as emersion.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago>That's amazing, best of luck. Thank you! >Will the revenue info be public? Yes, I intend to publish quarterly reports, and I'm open with the financials whenever anyone asks. I generated this report just now for you: https://sr.ht/QOml.txt https://sr.ht/QOml.txt. This is combined with my donation income, which is already public: https://drewdevault.com/donate/ https://drewdevault.com/donate/ >Hopefully sustainability is not far off I hope so too! The way I plan with these numbers is to assume yearly payments are added to the reserves and starts burning down immediately, then I do worst-case projections based on existing monthly donations with a churn factor built-in, then other projections assuming various degrees of growth based on historical numbers. The most pessimistic projections give me ~10 months and the more optimistic ones show sustainablity coming soonish. >Are the current subscriptions close to replacing what you were making at your fulltime job? No, but I hope it will be soon! >I look forward to the day when you can hire other prominent contributors such as emersion. Me too :)
- kev009 8y agoIt's funny seeing people from niche things you used to be into pop up in other places. When I was in my teens I did a lot of Ultima Online emulator stuff and have seen many of the server devs at places like Google in my career. I remember Drew's name from minecraft reverse engineering and development when I was in college.
- isacikgoz 8y agoCongratulations! It is a great devotion of you, I would like to support too!
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoThank you!
- andrepd 8y agoFunny, just yesterday I stumbled upon your blog and the post about your plan to working in Free Software full time. Your enthusiasm transpires, and your level-headedness. Now I see you've done it! I just want to say, congratulations!
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoThank you!
- ktta 8y agoWishing you all the best! Looking forward to sr.ht being a success :)
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoThank you!
- Leace 8y agoIt's inspiring to see people work full-time on free software. I remember the shock when I found out Conversations.im creator is also working "9-5 days in Open Source." [0] Good luck Drew! [0]: https://twitter.com/iNPUTmice https://twitter.com/iNPUTmice
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoThank you!
- knocte 8y agoWelcome to the club!
- peatmoss 8y agoMy best argument for UBI is, “I’d love to be able to work on F/OSS full time.” Kudos for making it a reality. It may be scratching a personal itch, but the positive externalities to society are real.
- dplgk 8y agoYour best argument for the country to get UBI is so people can work on OSS full time?
- karandodia 8y agoIf I understood correctly that's their personal best argument for UBI. We each have our own intrinsic motivations!
- peatmoss 8y agoYes, that’s what I meant. I can’t speak to the universal value or practicability of implementing and sustaining UBI :-)
- blfr 8y agoYeah, it's the modern version of a minor landed gentleman who can pursue his interests. It's how we got science. Sadly, the best argument against UBI is that vast, vast majority of people will not be working full time on F/OSS or quite possible anything else.
- smt88 8y ago> vast, vast majority of people will not be working full time on F/OSS or quite possible anything else. I doubt this. Everyone has dreams or long-term things they enjoy working on. And UBI wouldn't be enough for most people, so they'd at least pursue some form of cash-generating work.
- andy_adams 8y ago
- jordigh 8y agoReally brave to take a gamble on negative income. I really hope it pays off. This could be a very good example of how to make free software.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoThanks, I hope it works out too!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dominotw 8y agoI wish America had universal health care. If i do this, I can afford to pay for rent and food in a low cost of living area but not health insurance. Anyone know of a nonprofit that pays for health insurance for ppl working on OSS?
- robert_foss 8y agoI don't know if moving is an option for you. But there are plenty of countries that offer free healthcare. Sweden, UK, Norway... the list goes on.
- krageon 8y agoCountries with proper (ie almost everyone has it so it is reasonably affordable) paid-for healthcare exist as well, though I'm not aware of one that would be as cheap as the US could be in terms of cost of living.
- dominotw 8y agoI can't leave USA due to Green Card constraints.
- skrowl 8y agoAbout that "free" healthcare in Sweden, etc... If you make $60,000 here in the USA, you can expect to pay about 22% in taxes (https://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/tax-brackets.aspx https://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/tax-brackets.aspx) so ~$12,600. You move to Sweden and make that same $60K USD equivalent. Their tax rate is 61.85 percent (https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/personal-income-tax-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/personal-income-tax-rate) so ~$37,110. I bet you can stay here and buy some pretty great healthcare (plus a lot of other stuff) with that $24,510 difference. There's no such thing as a free lunch (or free healthcare). Not only are your taxes covering your "free" healthcare, but they're also covering "free" healthcare for several people who aren't working while you are.
- sudofail 8y agoI'd just like to point out that your figures don't add up. First of all, you're not taking into account that Sweden has a progressive tax rate, like the US. The figure you quoted in your second link is for the highest marginal tax rate. If you were to be consistent, you could use the figure for America's marginal tax rate listed in your second article, which is 37%. So apples to apples comparison would be that the US pays $22,000 in taxes at the highest marginal rate on 60k. Keep in mind that the US also has state income tax, which can be upwards of an additional 15%. Anyway, these figures are all kinds of wrong. You need to account for the progressive tax rate for each country, the state taxes you might be subject to, and the tax benefits / write offs that are available to you for your tax bracket.
- interfixus 8y agoAnyone working on Alpine and Musl wins my more or less automatic upvote. And then full-time, with no immediate reimbursement and no long-term guarantee. Refreshing. Thank you, sir.
- skrowl 8y agoHere's my best argument for why UBI can't work in the USA. Let me know where i went wrong: My TV told me a "living wage" is at least $15 (but probably higher in liberal controlled areas like NYC / most CA cities / etc due to high cost of living & taxation), but we'll start with $15 to make it easy. $15/hr at 40hr/week = $31,200 per year. $31,200 * 328,300,000 population of USA = $10,242,960,000,000 Written out (for emphasis) that's TEN TRILLION TWO HUNDERD FOURTY THREE MILLION DOLLARS. That's just the handouts, not counting in any overhead / administrative costs to give out the handouts. It'll likely be more than that if you adjust it higher than $15 for people living in NYC, etc. Meanwhile, the entire GDP of the USA is less than 20 Trillion. That's the current GDP where people are incentivized to work, so it would likely go down (perhaps drastically) when people are paid to do nothing under UBI. Let me know how that adds up.
- makotech222 8y agoLol, the people don't just keep the money. they spend it.
- delinka 8y agoI'd assume that we would eventually make that distribution as efficient as possible with automation. I'd further assume that any money you make gets channeled through this system so that you have to earn past $30K to see any more money in your account. nit: ten trillion two hundred forty two billion nine hundred sixty million and no thousands ;-) How about "over $10.2 trillion"?
- dustfinger 8y agoI would like to do the same thing Drew. Thank you for making an example. Cheers!
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoThanks! I hope more people can follow this path, too.
- kongDaKid 8y agoHi Drew. I follow you on mastodon and your blog and appreciate your contributions and insights. Best of luck to you to succeed in your new venture
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoThank you!
- kevinherron 8y agoCongrats Drew. I've been rooting for you since your original post.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoThank you!
- ISNIT 8y agoFor anyone who'd like to try their hand at paid open source work, an organisation I write code for is hiring an Android dev to lead development on their Wikimedia-funded open source app... https://kiwix.org/android-dev/ https://kiwix.org/android-dev/
- harlanji 8y agoI have been doing this for a year. Check my Twitter for how it’s going, same handle.
- seba_dos1 8y agoGlad to see that! Recently I've been lucky enough to be contracted as a freelancer on GPL projects, or at least projects with LGPL core, with sending improvements to upstream projects being part of the job. It's so fulfilling and liberating that I wish it will stay this way forever :)
- maxxxxx 8y agoDid a company hire you? That's pretty cool. I'd love to do that.
- JoshuaRLi 8y agoDrew, thank you.
- jai_ 8y agoWill you be planning to contribute on the osu!lazer project again?
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoI still pull it down every now and again, but probably not going to contribute in any meaningful way. Once it's closer to being complete I'll probably go in and do a big Linux support patch. Odds are good for TrueCraft, though!
- simlevesque 8y ago<3 Thanks for your work on Sway, wlroots and sr.ht ! I use all three every day.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoI'm glad that you like them!
- simlevesque 8y agoThank you too :D I used to see you all the time here but now that I use Sway I appreciate your work even more!
- simplecomplex 8y agoPlease think twice before spending your life savings, especially if you have no solid plan for getting donations to pay for your living expenses. It’s much less risky to increase donations before quitting your job. Just be careful if this is your life savings.
- mStreamTeam 8y agoYou're the guy who got into a debate about chat protocols on my project, mstream. Man it's a small world. Good luck with everything. And thanks for checking out my project.
- kstenerud 8y agoIt would make a lot of sense for larger software houses to donate to open source developers who develop the tools they use. This is win-win since they get the best person to maintain the software, have the developer's ear, and don't have to deal with labor laws or office space or management. They don't even need to be in the same country or time zone. Plus, it's a cheap way to virtue signal, and goodwill is always good for business!
- chrisseaton 8y ago> to donate to open source developers who develop the tools they use Are those people available to work extra hours for pay though? I help maintain some open source software but if someone offered me money to work on it more then sorry but I don't have magic extra hours in the day to do that - I've got a full-time job and hobbies of my own. I think it's better the companies step forward and put the hours in as well as the money.
- kstenerud 8y agoWhen you donate to someone, there aren't strings attached. There are no expected hours. It's merely a "thank you", and an incentive for the person to keep at what he's already doing. Of course, with enough donations going on, it would be possible to quit your fulltime job like this fellow has done, freeing up even more of his time.
- badosu 8y agoWith enough funding the developer can invest in a team, adhering to their standards.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoThis works for many people, but one of my challenges has been that I mostly write end-user software - and end-users have much shallower pockets.
- dajohnson89 8y agoThis guy got me into Bitcoin in 2013, on freenode. I helped him diagnose a bug using git-bisect, and he paid me in btc. Had to create a coinbase account to receive the bounty. Best of luck Drew, and thank you.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoThanks!
- jammygit 8y agoI saw your website last year and thought your projects were intriguing. Congrats on being able to do it full time!
- cavneb 8y agoPlease check out https://codefund.app https://codefund.app. We help fund open source developers and projects through ethical advertising. We are also an open source project. Congrats on making this leap!