Ask HN: How can open-source maintainers get paid?

3 points by gurpreet- 7y ago ↗ HN

I understand that the traditional route for open-source maintainers to get paid is to offer some sort of support plan to those who need it. Or accept donations.

However, support plans are great if you have a substantial project and donations are few and far between (take the GPG project for example).

So I'm wondering, is there a non-traditional way to getting paid for open-source work? Are there projects tackling this problem? Or is the only viable solution to take your code and close-source it?

2 comments

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cimmanom 7y ago ↗

A couple major features in Django were funded via Kickstarter.

0x54MUR41 7y ago ↗

There is a platform called Tidelift [1]. Basically, open-source maintainers get paid from their subscriber. This platform was discussed recently on Hacker News. You can click this link [2].

[1]: https://tidelift.com/

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18063250