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Ask HN: How do you make a living contributing to and/or creating OSS projects?

87 points Brysonbw | 1 comments | 02 Apr 25 18:24 UTC | HN request time: 0.198s | source

How would one go about being a 'rogue' OSS contributor so to speak? Live off of donations, bounties, hackathons, ect?
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peteforde ◴[02 Apr 25 19:04 UTC] No.43560283[source]▶
The fact that the infrastructure of the world is build on the backs of people who literally cannot make a living wage is a major failure of late-stage capitalism.
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peterldowns ◴[02 Apr 25 19:06 UTC] No.43560307[source]▶
What makes you think capitalism is in "late-stage"? And what makes you think that free labor, voluntarily given, has anything to do with capitalism? And if it does, how could the astounding amount of value provided by the open source community be considered a failure?

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/

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1. peteforde ◴[02 Apr 25 19:38 UTC] No.43560661[source]▶
Late-stage capitalism is a term that is rapidly approaching its 100th birthday. It colloquially describes a phase of capitalism marked by the dominance of multinational corporations, financial speculation, and mass consumerism. Do you really take issue with this characterization?

I make no argument against free labor, voluntarily given in service of a collective good.

I do take issue with the fact that creating OSS is not a viable way to cover basic living expenses unless you are on some corporation's payroll.