Journey on working full time as open-source indie developer
Last time I was unemployed six years ago, and it was the first time I was left alone since I started working as a freshman. I wanted changes in my life, so I left job, packed bag and moved to another city to start from scratch. The first month was depressing; I was in a daze: who I am, nobody knows me, what happen when I go out of money (and it will happen sooner than expected), what the f*ck I’m doing here and where is expected changes? And know what, I survived, and moreover I was happy more than ever. I learned that happiness is more important than any work and from now on I’ll be working only remotely, met my beautiful wife, without whom I can’t imagine my life, and learned how to live minimalistic. It was one of best decisions in my life.
Month ago it happened again: I left my job, where I worked for more than four years. But this time things was different, I was different. There is no fear anymore, my mind is clear and i’m ready for the new changes. Chances to work on what you passionate about are rare, and I will regret if miss it. So after talking with my wife, we decided that its the best time to start the new venture: I’m starting working on my open-source project called Gor for full-time.
People who work on open-source projects and getting paid for that in developers community are very rare, and when I talk with my colleagues about my plans, I see envy (in a good sense). But the truth is, it is not about working on open-source itself, for me it is about working on what you passionate about, and it happened to be an open-source project.
There are so many terrific open source projects that die every year: contributors burn out, change jobs, raise kids, not enough marketing, or just do not evolve as fast as needed. Most of the successful OSS projects we know exists because they are created by big corps or supported by them. What about the rest? OSS is hard work, given away for free, and when projects grow to a some point, maintainers just get overflowed. I do not want to build another ghost-town.
Your first question probably is how am I going to make money? Hongli Lai from Phusion makes a great overview on Bootstrapping a Business Around Open Source. For Gor, I decided to choose premium features, subscription license and support plans. This strategy worked quite well for Mike Perham author of Sidekiq (the Ruby worker queue system) who sells a Pro and Enterprise versions, and I think it will work for me as well. Will see.
Gor is almost three years old, received some traction and already used in hundreds of companies. I feel that found something important, people want it, and clearly project does not get the love it deserves. Everyone benefit from making the project sustainable, and I am going to prove it.
I gave myself two months and set the goal to make enough sales pay my bills. If I fail, I will investigate different ways for sustainability like finding sponsors. Anyway, it will be a tremendous learning experience, I will work on the stuff I passionate about, and project quality will increase dramatically, this is already a success for everyone, so I’m not losing anything!
I will try to document my journey and hope it will inspire you. I’m happy to answer any question, and feel free to follow me on twitter to keep updated.
In the meantime you can read about my vision of Gor, see link below. Thank you for all the support!
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