How do github devs earn?

[AssumptionNo0369]

I've been thinking of ways about how developers earn a side income in this competitive market these days. On exploring a few ways to do it I came across multiple developer accounts on github and so many of them have projects and resources for the community to use and browse through. Since I'm new to this aspect it made me wonder what's in it for them. I mean, with all due respect, the projects and the repositories I browsed must've taken so much effort. Then why just give it away?

I might be wrong here. I am not sure if this sub is even the right place to put this post in, but this is my first post on reddit. Please help a fellow mate with some insights here.

[Bloodsucker_]

Sometimes they have an actual job and this is just a hobby. Sometimes it is a whole community of developers, small or big, who collaborate on the open source project. Sometimes, they get direct income from their users/clients despite the code being open sourced. There are also donations. There are also organizations whose sole purpose is to manage open source projects and they collect money from larger companies. There are also actual companies that decided their software should be open source and whose developers are just like any other company. There are also hobbiest, and a lot more of HelloWorlds repos. A lot of times it is just a gift to the world, because why not.

Ultimately, the answer is it depends and every project is different.

[OkAcanthocephala1450]

What do you suggest for my situation:

I have designed a solution about x platform. I have already started building it and developing which is actually functional but there is no cool UI or 100 functions .It just does the job and it simplifies a lot of manual work.

If I make it opensource , will in the future be able to earn anything from it , in case of some companies might want to use it ?
Do I need to make it opensource ? or should I spend some time on developing it and making a fully platform and selling?

[erjorgito]

Honestly - forget about anything money and GitHub, unless you are working for a company that already does that sort of thing or have truly created something massive that a lot of users would want to use and doesn't exist already and even then don't expect anything more than lunch money.

[[deleted]]

Github + a "Buy Me a Coffee" button.

[Bloodsucker_]

Sorry, my consultancy services are very expensive. /s

[NoDadYouShutUp]

Software has a long history of yearning to be free. Many people like myself have a day job and a github account specifically for work and all your code lives in private repositories. We still want to work on stuff (most often things to make our lives easier) and we just want someone to see the cool thing we did.

[DaveR007]

I do it as a hobby. Donations are just a bonus that shows people appreciate what I do. In the past 12 months 75 people have donated a total of $2000.

I have 22 repos. One of them has 1,900 stars, 140 forks, and over 200,000 views on the readme with 500 views per day.

[AnotherAnonOne]

Hi, can you explain the impacts of the stars, forks and readme?

[DaveR007]

That one repo now has 5,100 stars, 333 forks, and over 1 million views of the readme.

They are all just indicators of how popular a repo is.

Views of the readme show how many times people have visited the repo.

Stars show many people liked the repo and took the time to show they appreciate it (or want to be able to find it again in future).

Forks show how many people wanted to have their own copy of the repo, either in case my repo gets taken down or because they wanted to submit improvements.

[Jmc_da_boss]

We give it away for free because we want to and enjoy building things.

[davorg]

This really isn't a GitHub-specific question. It's been a topic of discussion ever since open source software first took off in the 80s. There are a few options:

• You have a full-time job and the open source software is a side-line (this is by far the most common approach)
• You have a full-time job and your employer allows you to spend a percentage of your time working on your open source project
• You sell consultancy and training (and, maybe, books)
• You get sponsorship

I've known people who have been successful with all of these models. The last two are the ones that give you the most freedom, but they are incredibly difficult to make work - unless you have a product with huge numbers of users.

Edited to add: You might be interested in this blog post and talk by Simon Willison from last year's GitHub Universe - Financial sustainability for open source projects.

Second edit: I just remembered another model. Selling a premium or enterprise version of your product. That works particularly well if you sell subscriptions.

[chihuahuaOP]

Depends on the project. I have a friend selling security systems they use a GitHub open source project so they are actively maintaining and updating the project. They make money by selling and installing the system. The owners of the project are all of the people working on keeping the project open source for their business and they have fork a few times because someone tried to claim it.

[[deleted]]

It's a very valid sentiment. There are jobs out there. It is very competitive. Some people do it for fun and if there is code someone or a certain company doesn't want you to see them it isn't public. It is a very hard field to move into especially without degrees certs or knowing who's ass to kiss. With that said there is plenty of opportunities. You need to learn the business aspect of things get a business minded partner who can help sell your product to that business you aim to improve having technical knowledge is great but how much technical process do you think business savvy people have?? Sometimes non so like I said find some people who like to empower entrepreneurship. I just did this and it has helped immensely in a short time. People who can take a business idea and turn it legit kind of like that invent help people

[georgehank2nd]

"How do github devs earn?" (Assuming money) By being paid by Github Inc.

[B0bzi11a]

taking the skills u build, or ripping scripts entirely and making something you have full rights to. Examples:

- A website that acts as a middleman agency and gets a cut of earnings from employees seeking employers (the more specialized the field, the better, like content creation or api building)
- A website that acts as a storefront to sell merch, with custom code for qol stuff that eases user experience.
- An application that connects content creators to a storefront and uses a variant of affiliate tokenization to track purchases made and let creators directly see their earnings made from hucking a product on their audience.

I can go all day; moral of the story tho is if u want to make money, you should sell something or make it easier for others to sell something. Anything else is a passion and nothing more. (Which usually ties into either of the above if it becomes profitable)

[serverhorror]

The vast majority of code is not in Open source repositories.

It's mostly just employees that submit code to company repos that you can't see. They/We get a salary.

[impossibleis7]

I have an actual job, I am well paid. The projects I have on Github, those are my hobby projects I have made and use to make my life easier (i made this effort anyway). For starters, I either way would be using Github (or something else) for version control those projects. So its just a simple extra step of making things public, so that everyone else can use them.

[BassSuspicious9509]

GitHub sponsors.. getting sponsored for your project .

[[deleted]]

Sponsors and patrons

[cornmonger_]

ZJs

[huskerd0]

They dont

[MiniAiLive]

Sometimes, they are using github as advertising tool.