The only problem with open source is you can’t really make a profit from it. If someone wants it, they can just spin up their own local copy of the original, and you can’t do shit about it.
That’s true if the entire project is open source, but if just the engine is, you can still charge for the game. And Godot has a special closed license that you can get, so that you can sell your game on consoles.
Yup, as a software dev, I would love to be able to devote all my time to writing open source, but I gotta make money to live as well. Switching to working on OSS would be a huge leap of faith that there is someone out there willing pay/donate for my work. As it is, I think it will be my way of giving back once I have saved up enough money from my proprietary work, and hopefully I will be able to switch over sooner rather than later.
Maybe I’ll go take a look at what the process is for getting grants from the government or non-profit orgs like Apache foundation…
Many organizations writing open source stuff are hiring people to work full-time. You might not earn as much as other places, but just because they are non-profits doesn’t mean they don’t have money or an income.
Yup, that’s true, and I am always open to and looking for new opportunities, but that also requires them to be interested in hiring me - not a trivial feat, especially in the current job market.
I’d also wager that the number of job positions writing OSS for organizations like that is much lower than proprietary job positions.
But you know what, I’ll go shop around a little in my free time the next week or two. I’d love for (more of) my work to be publicly accessible and not locked up in a proprietary codebase.
Proprietary software always leads to this. Open source is the future
The only problem with open source is you can’t really make a profit from it. If someone wants it, they can just spin up their own local copy of the original, and you can’t do shit about it.
That’s true if the entire project is open source, but if just the engine is, you can still charge for the game. And Godot has a special closed license that you can get, so that you can sell your game on consoles.
Yup, as a software dev, I would love to be able to devote all my time to writing open source, but I gotta make money to live as well. Switching to working on OSS would be a huge leap of faith that there is someone out there willing pay/donate for my work. As it is, I think it will be my way of giving back once I have saved up enough money from my proprietary work, and hopefully I will be able to switch over sooner rather than later.
Maybe I’ll go take a look at what the process is for getting grants from the government or non-profit orgs like Apache foundation…
Many organizations writing open source stuff are hiring people to work full-time. You might not earn as much as other places, but just because they are non-profits doesn’t mean they don’t have money or an income.
Yup, that’s true, and I am always open to and looking for new opportunities, but that also requires them to be interested in hiring me - not a trivial feat, especially in the current job market.
I’d also wager that the number of job positions writing OSS for organizations like that is much lower than proprietary job positions.
But you know what, I’ll go shop around a little in my free time the next week or two. I’d love for (more of) my work to be publicly accessible and not locked up in a proprietary codebase.
Why not work for Godot? Or KDE, or LibreOffice,… They need full-time workers too
i see this as an absolute win.
Not in the same way but earning money at the point of distribution is not the only way, there’s various patronage methods.