Making Money off FOSS

A pastebin of this tweet:

https://twitter.com/sehurlburt/status/885604819632705536

"Some advice to a friend who is trying the "Make your software FOSS and get paid to add/prioritize features" business model"

Check out the Twitter thread for further advice.

---

Keep in mind you don't need to have an hourly rate, you can set a monthly or other kind of rate too

Sometimes doing that helps reduce people being nit picky with hours

You should consider a few things:

1) what your salary would be as a software developer for them
2) Extra taxes, no vacation days, paying your own medical, and all the extra expenses that come with being a contractor
3) The fact that when you contract, you can't count on finding another gig right afterwards. Even if you did, negotiating it can take time. You need padding to help you between gigs
4) How valuable this is to them. If this is crucial to their project or you're saving them tons of money you can charge a whole lot. Feel free to ask them how important this is to them or how much money/time it saves them
5) How rare your skill set is. Sure, you're a developer, but are they really going to find someone else to do this instead?
6) Extra benefits they get from contracting you. This can raise the price substantially. Perhaps you can guarantee them X years of close support others don't get

Another extra benefit could be temporary exclusivity. I've seen open source devs make a ton of cash from temporary exclusivity

So in short, don't view this like a typical contract gig. It's a business deal-- you are working on a feature that (in their eyes) you might not want to add any time soon, for them, saving them tons of cash, perhaps with extra benefits

So what you want to do is brainstorm any extra benefits you can give them and ask them questions to figure out what all this is worth

The last thing to consider is their budget. If they don't have a lot of money there's going to be a limit no matter what this is worth to them.