How Open Source Developers Make CRAZY Money (One Made $34 Billion)
TThe Coding Koala
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Transcript
00:00:00people often think that contributing to open source is just for showcasing on your resume
00:00:05and linkedin but if you play your cards right you could actually become a millionaire from it
00:00:09or at the very least never have to worry about finding a job again today we're looking at how
00:00:14open source developers actually earn money and whether average people like you and me can also
00:00:19start printing cash from it so there are five real ways how this actually works and first one on our
00:00:25list is open core or dual licensing and this one's interesting in your open source tool you lock up
00:00:31a very specific very valuable part of your code inside a paywall while giving away almost everything
00:00:37completely for free that's open core a regular developer a student a small startup anyone can
00:00:44use the full free version no strings attached but there's a separate enterprise or pro version with
00:00:50stuff that only matters once you're a huge company advanced security controls permission
00:00:54systems dashboards for 500 employees to use and stuff like that dual licensing is the same trick with
00:01:01a twist instead of splitting features you split who's allowed to use it free for personal use or hobby
00:01:07projects but the second a company wants to build a paid product on top of your code they need a
00:01:12different paid license and that's how open core and dual licensing works now moving on to the next one
00:01:19selling services around paid product my personal favorite take red hat the company
00:01:24behind the red hat linux distro anyone can download it completely free no charge but what they do charge
00:01:31for support and maintenance say you're a new company wanting your entire infrastructure built on red hat
00:01:36linux you need experts and the biggest experts are red hat itself they'll set up thousands of company
00:01:42computers and hand you a ready-to-use system and it doesn't stop its setup you'll need someone to call
00:01:48when things break at 2am meaning you need continuous support and maintenance so red hat earns from the
00:01:54setup fee and again from ongoing maintenance and this isn't little money red hat made so much doing
00:02:00exactly this that ibm bought the entire company for 34 billion dollars in cash now moving on to the next
00:02:07one we have corporate sponsorships and it's exactly what it sounds like let's say after this video you
00:02:13get motivated to build something you did it and open sourced it slowly people and companies started
00:02:19using it a year passed and you haven't made a single penny out of it so you get frustrated and stop
00:02:25maintaining it altogether then suddenly things will start breaking and the companies relying on your code
00:02:30will start panicking blowing up your inbox asking why it's not fixed you tell them that you stopped maintaining it because it
00:02:36wasn't paying your bills and that's when they will say we use your product dude to start working on it and we will
00:02:42start paying you congratulations you just made your first dollar from open source
00:02:48company sponsorships plays out a few ways a company pays a maintainer directly or
00:02:53donates through a foundation managing a bunch of critical projects at once
00:02:57or straight up hires the maintainer full-time to keep doing exactly what they were already doing
00:03:01except now you get a paycheck linux is the classic example here linus torvalds the sole
00:03:08creator of it doesn't get paid by companies directly he draws a salary from the linux foundation
00:03:13which is entirely funded by the top companies like ibm google and intel who don't want linux to stop
00:03:19moving on to the fourth one we have sponsorships and donations this one's different from corporate
00:03:24sponsorship because this time it's not one company it's regular people or companies chipping in small
00:03:30amounts just because they appreciate what you built for free basically the buy me a coffee type of
00:03:34thing you put your project on platforms like github sponsors patreon open collective and people tossing
00:03:40a few bucks but here's the catch the method follows a pattern most projects get almost nothing a few
00:03:46dollars here and there while a tiny handful at the top pulling enough to actually live on kind of like how
00:03:52most of the money in the world sits with a few people while everyone else survives on the drops
00:03:57so if you're doing open source donations shouldn't be your primary income finally the last one and
00:04:04honestly the dream for most open source devs getting hired because of your open source work you start
00:04:10contributing or building your own projects and slowly build a reputation in the community that reputation
00:04:16won't pay you in a week or maybe even a year but eventually it will companies want people who are
00:04:21actually good at building things and five rounds of interviews barely prove that so instead some
00:04:27companies skip the guessing game entirely and hire the developer whose open source work they've
00:04:32already been staring at for years they don't need to validate your skill because they've already seen
00:04:37it so that's five real ways open source developers actually make money now you might be thinking can
00:04:43i get into this i mean it sounds like smart people stuff and i still have to open claw just to center
00:04:48a dive that concern's valid to contribute you need skills you can actually contribute simple logic but
00:04:54that doesn't mean this isn't for you nobody's an expert on day one if you don't feel skilled enough
00:05:00that's your sign to start upskilling build projects learn new things and even if you don't fully believe
00:05:05in yourself yet just start pick a small open source project and make it a little better doesn't matter
00:05:11how small and the best place to upskill yourself is code crafters basically here you get to build
00:05:17complex projects like redis database or coding agents from scratch yourself if you are interested
00:05:23i have given link in description make sure to check it out start working on small potato stuff
00:05:29and slowly you will move to big potato stuff once you stay consistent so i guess that's too much
00:05:34motivation for this video you now know how open source developers get paid and hopefully you've
00:05:38got your answer on whether you should start contributing if you enjoyed this make sure to
00:05:43hit that subscribe button and i'll see you in the next one
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