Ask HN: Developing open source “resting” on the social security net possible? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Developing open source “resting” on the social security net possible?

16 pointsfreemint10 comments

Assuming one is a single, has no urge to build a family, can move to a part of the country where living costs are cheap and is motivated to work on an open source project which will not get a commercial sponsor, can one work on open source projects full time, not take any other jobs and exist on whatever social security your contry provides without compromising health or future finances if one decides to get a full time job again (no repayments, worse tax brackets, ... )?

If you have tried it, feel free to share your stories. I would appreciate it if the focus of the conversation does not become whether what i proposed is ethical. It should also not become hyper focused on the USoA where i assume this is not possible.

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Get a job as a security guard for an office building. You will have fewer interruptions than most full time software engineers.

I can confirm this. Did it when I was younger. On night shift, I was interrupted only three or four times per week. Lonely, though.

I've heard of a few prolific open source developers living in their cars/boats. It was rough but that's their choice, they didn't have stable internet connection so optimized for offline work. In lots of aspects it was similar to a homeless person but they made it work, they've also received some limited sponsorship from companies that used their code.

This sort of lifestyle only works in some parts of the country - although, if you're living in a car, you can follow pleasant weather around the country.

If you have thick skin, live cheaply and have a high tolerance for administrative bull%5^ you can make it work.

I've known a few long-term unemployed people in NZ who programmed a lot for fun. Not disciplined "open source as a job", however.

Collecting unemployment can be a surprising amount of work. In NZ/AU it's sufficiently annoying and unpleasant that not many people who could hold down a decent job would bother. So working as designed, I guess.

Nominally you're supposed to apply for N jobs per week, go to interviews, do training or whatever according to a plan you make with a case worker. The enforcement is not entirely consistent from one benefit office to another or even across case workers. People's experiences vary a lot.

In NZ it's harder to move to a low cost of living area - those areas have no jobs. They'll pay your benefit if you grew up there but not if you move there.

> Nominally you're supposed to apply for N jobs per week, go to interviews, do training or whatever according to a plan you make with a case worker.

In many countries that is a requirement of unemployment, not the social system. In ones where you fall out of unemployment into the social system they have often classified you as unable to work.

On the topic in general, I would point out that it is usually frowned upon to do anything that is valuable economic work for free while needing to rely on social insurances. One is in essence undercutting paid positions for other workers if one builds usable Enterprise Software, does a data entry internship, etc. I would recommend working on no-commercial-potential GNU oriented Software. (Accidentally getting small contracts can also end up being a hassle/liability in some benefit systems.)

There is some part of your brain that controls how good you are at controlling your own behavior. Some people are bad at it (alcoholics, drug addicts), most people are average, and some people are exceptionally good at it (Elon Musk perhaps?). To do what you suggest is materially possible but requires exceptionally strong self-control. Odds are your self-control isn't that strong because if it were, you'd be preoccupied with other things. It's like people asking about studying higher math on their own. Ofc it's possible but for most people the self-control required isn't there.

Like the other comment says, in the UK it is not easy and they will make you spend a lot of time on admin stuff. They will probably try to sanction you (remove benefits) at some point. If you don't make enough national insurance contributions your pension may suffer later (I don't know how that works for unemployed people)

I spent one year working on an open source “side” project full time. I had savings and my wife continued to have income so I had plenty of safety net (thanks honey), with a goal of seeing whether I could sustain doing it indefinitely. My experience doesn’t help with the social security part of your question (we also were in the US) but maybe can help with the rest.

tldr; it didn’t work out financially but I’m super glad I tried, if only to not regret not trying. The biggest thing I didn’t expect was for capitalist instinct to take over: I liked working on open source because I could work on what I wanted to; but to work on what I wanted to indefinitely, and play the latest video games and go out to eat sometimes or whatever, I needed the thing to make some money.

So an unplanned, surprising amount of time went into revenue generation. I previously had a Patreon page that brought in ~$20 / mo, and during my year I got to ~$500 / mo (Patreon + Stripe). I also picked up some contract work for a few hours a week. No matter what happens the bill comes due, in more ways than one—I grew a new respect for founders, who have more than just themselves riding on this.

Even so, it was freeing to turn my nights-and-weekends fun work into full-time work, to spend stupid irresponsible amounts of time on small things like polish, to be able to drop what I was doing at any time to go hang with friends or walk the dog or go get eggs, and to dip my toes into every trade from design to swag to marketing to customer support to user research. I also used my free nights and weekends to learn a foreign language at a local community college.

Wouldn’t trade it for the world, but probably also won’t be doing it again until retirement.

get a job, bum

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