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Comment by mlang23 | Hacker News Reader

The title made it already clear that this is an instance of "I am fighting the good fight, so please give me your money." I am an open source/FLOSS enthusiast since 25 years, but such calls still sound pathetic to me. These days even more then 10 years ago. Its a bit like going "I volunteer as an ambulance driver, do you have a few dollars?" I can see that some people dream of becoming financially independent from just coding open source. I have dreams as well. But the truth is, only a very select few ever reach that point. Joey Hess with git-annex comes to mind. I guess he just hit a nail at the right time, and wrote something that many people actually use. But if you're just that tad below the "everyone knows your tool"-line, you will never ever make your living from donations.

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Nonetheless, you do seem to acknowledge that it’s possible while saying one should not even try. And yet this is oblivious to the fact that the only people who succeeded were among the people who tried in the first place.

OK, lets put it another way. If everyone who deserves support for their work is going to be posted on HN, its going to take a long time until the last one gets their money.

They will get money faster that way than by not asking anyone for support.

Does Will have an obligation to create a sustainable funding solution for every person who is doing important work? Or does Will just have an obligation to make their personal niche within the world sustainable?

To me, if Will is trying to build software that is genuinely valuable to people, and if people are willing to give them money so that software continues to exist, then that's enough. I don't think Will is also obligated to solve Open Source funding on a systemic level. "Do things that don't scale" is still often sound business advice.

I didn't get this vibe. I read through like 3 or 4 pagaraphs and money was never mentioned.

You shouldn't stop reading - they are mentioned in 5th paragraph, literally (as in "income" and "savings")

>I am an open source/FLOSS enthusiast

What does "enthusiast" mean here exactly?

>if you're just that tad below the "everyone knows your tool"-line, you will never ever make your living from donations.

I wouldn't be so sure. https://awesomekling.github.io/I-quit-my-job-to-focus-on-Ser...

This is shifting rapidly. We are not living 25 years ago.

Kickstarter initiated a trend of paying for things we want by funding people that are creating in our niche areas of interest.

Platforms like Patreon and Ko-fi let you support the creators you want directly. You can do it on a subscription basis and have a 1:1 channel to talk with the creator. You can get custom work, support, advice, etc.

Github introduced recurring donations directly on user pages, making it seamless to contribute to open source creators. I chip in $5-30/mo to my favorite projects. I'm not the only one doing this, and the money adds up.

Twitch and YouTube introduced subscriptions, bits, and channel points, which gamify contributions and make you feel involved. These have resulted in a massive windfall for creators, and that same technique will propagate into open source. "Get your name in the README", etc., distributed on millions of machines is a compelling technique.

The world is changing.

I give a couple bucks a month to a few creative people I appreciate. I don't get anything for it, and I don't care. I just want to support them. There's nothing majorly controversial about any of this. I read the article and the guy seems super humble and there's no degree of "pathetic begging" whatsoever. Great post (with a nice clean site design I should add).

If I were to give $1 monthly to everyone who substantially contributed to the software I am using on a daily basis, I believe my salary wouldn't suffice and I'd have to go live on the street. I know about Patreon, yes. But I also know that only the most prominent figures will actually earn enough to make it worthwhile. And in a sense, they are making money off the fact that the other 99% does not try to get payed for what they volunteered for.

The dudes got savings and career to fallback on—he might be dreaming but it's not like it'll hurt to try. Not to mention he's already popular in Python circles (i.e. tech workers with disposable income) and has an existing group of sponsors.

Sounds like you only read the title. The OP is planning on living off his savings for a while. I'm sure he would love for sponsorship to make his work self-sustaining, but he would settle for paying a few bills.

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