How I make a living working on SerenityOS
awesomekling.github.io
awesomekling.github.io
> I created a Patreon back in April of 2019. I felt a bit silly at the time, with thoughts like “who do I think I am” and “what am I even doing” echoing in my head. I still did it though. I was too curious to see what would happen, even though I expected nothing. Amazingly, a couple of people actually signed up!
I'm definitely relating to this experience. Feels hella pretentious and weird to set up donations. Was likewise surprised to actually get people sending me money. I guess the moral of the story is if you build cool things, people are willing to chip in.
I'm not sure of your location, but in the US these are not donations but income on which taxes need to be paid.
Lawyer Google tells me donations are just money gifts. Some organizations that are approved can hand you a recipe that allows you to tax deduct it. And I think those organizations also don't need to pay taxes on it.
TIL. Not sure how well that resonates in Sweden though.
When you donate to 501(c)(3) corporation, you can deduct the donation against your taxes and the organization does not have to pay taxes on your gift.
The paper you show the store is either a "tax exempt" certificate or a reseller certificate. In the case of your non-profit, it's probably a tax-exempt certificate, but other types of businesses can avoid paying sales taxes on items they purchase if they are for resale.
I know this may seem overly pedantic, but taxes are an area where there is a lot of misinformation online, so I'm trying to help reduce any confusion the post may have cuased.
Definition of donation
: the act or an instance of donating: such as
a : the making of a gift especially to a charity or public institution
b : a free contribution : gift
Source: IRS
I wouldn't agree with the statement entirely. There are people who were building cools things, but getting support has been hard for many of them. Specially in the early 2000s, open source felt like a very personal battle to build cool stuff, where people with sheer will and luck survived. Now, OSS developers like Andreas thrive and grow because of community support.
In the last few years, Open Source went through a cultural shift that enabled people to ask for support openly. You know the human behind the work, not an organization. You have Andrew Kelly of Zig, Evan You of Vue and many more who are not organizations but individuals making contributions. It is a radical change.
We have also seen a radical change in sentiment that all developers are bounded by some moral internal code to support OSS projects, whether it be through code, answering Stack Overflow questions or through donations.
Another aspect is that, code streaming and creating community chatroom has enabled many developers to share their ideas openly and create microcosms of spaces where communities can form. These communities are sources of support in the form of development, spiritual support and income.
It is not entirely about cool things anymore. It is more than that. We probably are living in the golden age of Open Source development.
In other words: would we be seeing a similar level of donations for makers and hackers if the gaming/just chatting streamers hadn't paved the way?
Does 'Support me on Patreon' add more legibility than 'Support me on my x website' to a potential donor?
Because, Its trivial for a developer to integrate Stripe or any other PG on their website & they can stop paying double commissions on Patreon; Besides no vendor lock-in, censorship or payment delays.
If you only support one or two people or you give larger monthly amounts, having Stripe or whatever set-up would be better - I think it's more about creating an atmosphere where it's encouraged to give relatively small fiscal amounts (a couple dollars a month) to many people.
Basically seems like a kind of annoying attention seeker. I wouldn't say toxic though.
So, she seems quite alright then. A bit egotistical, perhaps not the wisest with the 1.2M USD, a bit 'arty', but nothing toxic indeed.
I met her a few years ago and she seemed like a friendly, kind person. And, that didn't make me agree with the content of the video more.
Sometimes I watch and listen intently, and learn a lot. Sometimes I zone a little. It's perfect. If you are interested in programming in general I can just highly recommend checking it out.
just pick something that sounds interesting, basically. there's no need to have watched prior videos to understand what's going on, generally. Either way, most of the code encountered in the video will mostly have been written without being recorded
If you want to get the latest about SerenityOS, he does this "Office Hours" thing live every friday. Which might be the answer you are looking for.
Is Serenity OS a bunch of parlor tricks, and is it a UNIX reimpl, or is there anything interesting in the underlying OS design (micro vs macrokernel, userspace vs kernelspace, everything-is-a-file-Plan9, shell design, etc)?
Building the next unicorn is awesome and all but in my opinion, this has it's own place. I am glad some people out there get to work on their dream projects and actually can make a living out it. Kudos to all the supporters, obviously.
I also love how focused SerenityOS is and what kind of audience it caters to. Some people might say, "make it for everyone" but that doesn't work most of the time. Having a focused audience allows a lot of freedom in the way of UX/DX, docs, communication etc. So I am glad Andreas set that down upfront.
Maybe it will also be useful some day, maybe not, but to me at least that's not the point. It's really cool that we can fund some art projects like this in the software industry!
Not a perfect comparison, but it's like how some people approach math simply for the beauty of it. That's enough of a reason! And sometimes that math ends up useful too - maybe because math has a connection to reality. So does software - it runs.
I also have some experience with the Recovery community, and most of my work is actually designed for that community.
I wish him the very best. I wonder if he uses any of the stuff I wrote?
I do things One Day at A Time, and More Will Be Revealed.
But then again there are so many distros it’s not that surprising.
> Hello everybody out there using minix -
> I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and
> professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing
> since april, and is starting to get ready.
Andreas will eventually most definitely get a salary closer to what he could get elsewhere and in the meantime he doesn't have to compromise on his mental health by working for a company that forces him to write bad software on purpose.
It's a pretty sweet deal, and it's a shame only few of us have a chance to experience this.
I think what he's done is amazing for these reasons:
He's created a viable operating system with hundreds of contributers
He's supporting his family
He's got himself well out of isolation with a big community of people
Edit: forgot one. He's staying soberI still mourn Terry Davis passing.I really enjoyed seeing him work on his Operating System and I was really saddened when his mental condition deteriorated to the point he got homeless, ultimately ending his life. With meds, he'd still be here and kicking :-(
He also did a Commute talk about TempleOS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr3xN52QYtA
I'm not even sure he lurks anymore.
I myself started browsing in high-school and haven't been able to stop since -- I can probably attribute the development of my entire engineering philosophy to the place.
I’m being nit picky. But big tech isn’t THAT insane. 7 figure TC is incredibly, incredibly rare. It’s not just “senior engineer”, it’s “senior senior senior senior” or more.
Still rare, though, but the C++ market has lots of weird little very high paid niches.
I would say that C++ expertise is often actually “underpaid” compared to its level of difficult. If you’re doing OS stuff in C++ you’re working on something embedded. If you’re doing embedded, you’re probably selling hardware, which has low margins (compared to pure software plays). Meanwhile a Ruby on Rails dev who can iterate their web app quickly can start getting PMF and basically print money.
Meanwhile I've yet to see a Rails job that pays enough to be worth my while, despite Ruby being by far my favourite language.
I get to use Ruby a lot (rarely Rails; don't like the thing), but because I am typically in senior enough positions to have autonomy in what I choose for my projects - the moment a job is advertised as a Rails job, the pay is accordingly low.
Are there just tons of smaller fish paying peanuts?
But Rails does best in a chunk of what used to be the PHP market for quick and dirty websites. Once companies scale, only a relatively small portion of their dev work tends to be Rails related, and not the most interesting/best paid parts of their dev work.
The roles you can use Ruby in are wider and there is some juicier stuff there, but most of that isn't advertised as Ruby. E.g. in a lot of devops roles you may come across quite a bit of Ruby tooling.
If you think electrical engineering is underpaid, check out chemistry.
If you think chemistry is underpaid, check out biology.
But seriously, outside of quant work or certified actuaries mathematicians do not make as much as one would think.
...is this a pile of hot air? Genuine question.
My understanding is that most of these really high wages are more strategic than anything else.
If they are an IC, they probably wouldn’t be leading anything except maybe thought leadership.
It felt invasive, but Andreas just shared and shared. Amazing person and his youtube car videos are so good and raw and honest.
We also actually spent sometime playing around with Serenity and that was fun (and was never released).
But yeah, I love the boldness of just starting to build something, taking a step in the direction and not worrying that it seems so large.
There would seem to be great uncertainty in how much money he will make per month.
He does have multiple income streams which is great, but none of them fixed (I think).
I was a freelance / independent developer for a while, but I worried far too much about not having work that I wanted to have multiple projects going at the same time in case one got cancelled / ended.
However, they all kept getting extended, which was good but also bad.
I was working on 3 contracts concurrently. working from home and working 95% of the day I managed to to keep then all happy, but it was taking a toll with stress and no life outside of work.
I was making good money. Yet I was too risk adverse. Once they had all finished, I ran to a corporate job again. (which meant turning down several contracts offered)
I think most people on HN are a lot better at handling being a freelancer and being independent.
the personality/attitude part for me is, that i grew up with the assurance that no matter how bad it gets, i will always have a safe place to live and enough food to eat. so i am not worried when i am not making money.
this obviously is more difficult in a country where such support doesn't exist. but the skill and planing part applies everywhere. i currently have a financial buffer of more than a year. i have had it for a while, and it's not shrinking. that means i am earning enough each month to cover my expenses. should i stop earning anything, then i'd still have more than a years time to find something new before things get dire. though if possible, now that i have this buffer, i want to try to keep it. if i dip below a years worth of savings, then i want to focus on earning more in order to refill the buffer.
That is below minimum wage in a place like Seattle for example ($14.49 / hour ~ $2,500 / month gross).
Cost of living matters a lot when "translating" income.
In Latvia, a much poorer EU country you're looking st 2.5k at least woth 5 years of exp.
This is also assuming you're employed. Contractors will probably at least double that.
So donate more...
1. https://www.ft.com/content/2a9274be-72aa-11e7-93ff-99f383b09...
That's literally fraud and tax evasion which comes with enormous fines, prison time, revocations of licenses and so on, which is why people don't do that.
(Sweden used to be a rich country, but we’ve fallen behind over the last few decades.)
There's a lot more thought that should go into a consideration when choosing between two places to live. A simple dollars to SEK comparison doesn't begin to scratch the surface of it.
Sweden has three levels (2106)
0 %, up to 18 800 kr
About 31 % for 18 800 to 443 200 kr.
31 % + 20 % (statlig skatt): 443 200 kr to 638 800 kr.
31 % + 25 % (statlig skatt): 638 800 kr and above
Roughly 130 000 SEK, or about 1000 USD per month.
See https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skatt_i_Sverige#Inkomstskatt
If that's true, retiring in Europe might get more and more common for US software developers...
I've been following Serenity for a while. Thanks for your educational expertise humbly conveyed in your videos!
Could it be beneficial for your company to be set up as a foundation? Since it is not "selling" Serenity, merely taking donations anyhow? I don't know the Swedish system but I wonder if that could provide tax advantages to donors and workers? If you have your own companies, you can pay yourself Director's dividends instead of being employed and drawing a salary. Again depending on the country, that may be advantageous - tax-wise, and also not having to do payroll.
Keep up the good work!
p.s. in Sweden the average is slightly below 30 hours of work/week
Across Sweden, only around 1% of employees work more than 50 hours a week, one of the lowest rates in the OECD, where 13% is the average. By law, Swedes are given 25 vacation days, while many large firms typically offer even more. Parents get 480 days of paid parental leave to split between them
Joe Armstrong, Erlang creator, talked a lot about being able to work on Erlang while being in Sweden because as a parent he was allowed to work less hours a day and had plenty of free time.
More than 40 is likewise very rare. A work-week is legally standardized up to at most 40 hours. Overtime is a thing, but demanding chronic overtime without good reason is a legal liability, where the boss responsible is held personally liable.
avearges are averages.
The average hours worked per week in the U.S. was 38.7 hours as of 2021. Men worked an average of 40.5 hours per week
so comparing a salary in US using hour rates, can lead to a very different result in Sweden.
In the case of working hours, the Swedish median, mode and mean are heavily divergent, since the distribution is truncated at 40 hours by the law and thus heavily skewed.
which makes it a maximum.
Thanks for confirming that it makes no sense to compare hourly rates between Sweden and Seattle, where people could work 60 hours a week.
No OECD country has a total tax wedge (including employers payroll taxes, which may be relevant here since he's running a company) above 50% for an average salary other than Belgium.
Sweden is at ca 42% vs ca 28% in the US.
Which is of course high, but e.g. effectively includes full health cover etc..
(For comparison, income tax and employee contributions average at ca 24% of an average salary both places)
Source: OECD Taxing Wages.
It's really great to see someone with such a passion being able to make a living from it.
I'd also add that this model - contribution supported - may work for people who have already built something great, but it dangerous to aspire too because some people just end up being beggars and optimizing for trying to get handouts ("buy me a coffee") instead of putting their project first* (to be clear, I don't think that's the case here)
*edit: not a unique problem to this model, same thing happens with "founders" trying to optimize for VC money instead of making something
I honestly think it's more common for projects to under-do that than to over-do it.
I'd love to see a remake of HP-UX's VUE (there is in fact a remake of the later CDE, and CDE itself is open-sourced). And it has almost the same UI but it's much more boring than VUE. VUE was from HP had smooth non-serif fonts and wild colour schemes. CDE was a followup joint-venture from HP, Sun and IBM and as a result they made it much more businessy. Serif fonts and boring brownish colours.
But all these things are super niche obviously, and it's really good to hear that he can still make a living from it.
Freedom is so confusing and foreign for some.
That sounds logical, but I'd hypothesize that a lot of donors are themselves fairly well off, so the effect may be less than you suggest.
I wonder why. I love SerenityOS but it doesn't seem the kind of thing a venture capitalist would be interested in
"i will pay you 17 million dollars to add web 3.0 to serenity os"
Break-even?! No, no, no. He's doing so much amazing work he should be making a lot more.
In any case, congrats on living the dream and working on things you can be proud of. I hope it never ends (or it ends on your terms).
What do you mean by this? His situation seems perfectly good - he has enough to live on without drawing down savings and gets to work on his passion project.
If we think he should get more in donations, we should donate more, I guess?
I think this part of the situation is the same for the author. They may not want to, but if their donations fall below an acceptable level, they too can get a job somewhere.
On an unrelated note, regarding your setup: which theme are you using in CLion? Thanks!
He said he’s HAPPY doing this. For some people that, in itself, can be enough.
It feels like so many here are trying to convince others of their world view instead of accepting the one this person shared.
As someone in a position to do something similar: Thanks for sharing!
The classic.
just one thing in this rat race of a life that's not about money!!!!!!!
I just newer see myself investing years in something just for fun. Supposing I'm rich and I don't need to work for money (which is not the case) I still want to work on something that people will find value using. The more people finding that something useful, the better.
Even when I wrote code just for learning or wrote a PoC, I tried to make it something usable by someone else.
It's not that what I do is great, is that I derive more joy from building something useful than from the mere process of building something.
To me code that sits unused is dead code and a loss of the most important human resource: time.
So I can see a value in writing something like Minix or a RTOS for microcontrollers or even research OSes, but I can't see value in writing another OS, browser engine and building a programming language to rewrite the OS in without a clear purpose.
There might be an entertaining value in it, a learning experience, fun but I guess you can derive all of that by working on something that has a purpose.
It's not a critique of the author, who I am sure it's a nice guy, and I wrote this hoping to be contradicted, hoping that someone can give me reasons why endeavors like this might be valuable.
Surely doing things for fun is the most important part of life? That is, if you don’t enjoy doing something then doing that something is a much bigger waste of time than doing something you genuinely enjoy.
Are you suggesting the OP would be better off doing something boring or annoying or something he dislikes? Would you suggest to your children that they should do a job or work in a field they don’t enjoy?
The world is moved forward by people following their passions and interests, and I would argue that the OP is likely to advance his life AND career much faster by pursuing his passions than doing something he dislikes.
That is true and I can't contradict it. I was just saying that I need to work on something that is both fun and useful.
I worked as a software developer and CTO for a bunch of startups, most of which folded. You spend months and maybe years writing software and features, thinking about every last edge case and how to avoid bugs when weird things happen, then no weird things happen because nobody uses the software, so in a way you might as well not have bothered.
At my current place, just working as a senior developer, I released a feature, which was an niche feature and only available to paying subscribers, but it was already discovered and used millions of times within the first few weeks, and there were forum posts where lots of people posted how useful the feature was to them, etc. The feature wasn't that technically complex, but I derived a lot of satisfaction from the fact it was highly-used and appreciated.
BTW now that I've read more about SerenityOS I really want to run it.