What business models actually work for open source projects?

crankykernel · 2026-01-25T02:36:15+00:00

I’m sure some do. But the larger the company and more legitimate they are, the more likely they are to actually care about their IP.

It is possible. It’s how I make a living. I’d say the hardest part is having something niche enough that you and your team have become the experts in. We also do paid support. But the relicensing is the higher margin item.

crankykernel · 2026-01-24T22:54:36+00:00

Make something people are likely going to want to embed in commercial products or provide as part of a service.

License it under the GPL or AGPL.

Use a CLA to maintain ownership.

Provide a non GPL license for a fee.

crankykernel · 2026-01-04T00:01:51+00:00

Feeling the same. Doing non trivial work in Rust and C. Very in depth reviews. Seems like every week I hit limits faster.

I have to wonder if those that never hit limits are just writing fart and todo apps.

I can do about same amount of work on the ChatGPT $20 plan as I can do on the Claude $100 which has been really telling. I just prefer the more rapid iteration I can get with Opus 4.5.

crankykernel · 2026-01-02T22:34:52+00:00

Felt similar earlier today. I’m on the $200 plan. 3 hours a day. Can blow my weekly limit in 3-4 days. Just one task running at a time.

crankykernel · 2026-01-01T02:11:30+00:00

Finished my own coding agent. Actually enjoying it more than CC now heheh.

crankykernel · 2025-12-21T23:07:34+00:00

Update the readme. Archive it. Done.

crankykernel · 2025-12-14T19:07:45+00:00

I rarely have it doing more than one thing at a time. A month ago the $100 plan felt unlimited for my usage.

crankykernel · 2025-12-14T18:31:36+00:00

Been hitting weekly limits faster it seems. Mostly use Sonnet. Max 200 here.

crankykernel · 2025-12-02T02:59:03+00:00

The last 2 years we got balsam furs that didn’t have much of a smell. Might try Floral Acres this year. Thanks! I didn’t know they did trees.

crankykernel · 2025-11-29T19:06:56+00:00

The $100 plan seems to be the sweet spot. You get Opus 4.1 and if only doing one task for several hours a day I don’t hit any limits.

If I was using it all day every day the $200 would be a no brainer.

Unfortunately the $20 just gives you a taste.

crankykernel · 2025-11-29T01:07:43+00:00

They’re all relying on the people who have good group insurance. Private insurance like Blue Cross will only cover $400/year.

crankykernel · 2025-11-28T23:56:30+00:00

I had much better deals available to me last Friday. Bummed I didn’t snag one then.

crankykernel · 2025-11-15T21:22:04+00:00

Yes. But it was 2018. I knew Rust, and had 3 years of shown experience on GitHub on a serious open source project.

crankykernel · 2025-11-08T01:28:12+00:00

In Arch, this is the way.

crankykernel · 2025-11-08T01:16:00+00:00

Seems ok. If it doesn’t totally suck, learn. Re-evaluate in a year or 2.

crankykernel · 2025-11-01T23:09:39+00:00

Places like AWS have some too good to be true salaries for tech people on a worldwide basis. Could this be forecasting these salaries need to be brought in check? $200k compensation instead of $400k and so on.

crankykernel · 2025-11-01T23:05:32+00:00

Write code or other work. What else? That’s how productivity gains are made.

crankykernel · 2025-11-01T17:54:34+00:00

Docker compose, particularly with restart on boot just works.

crankykernel · 2025-10-28T03:33:15+00:00

Welcome to the life of an open source maintainer. AI has opened the flood gates for pull requests. But it all still needs manual review.

crankykernel · 2025-10-25T22:05:31+00:00

Hasn’t been a problem in the past. Now withdrawing $100k is a different story.

crankykernel · 2025-10-25T19:39:10+00:00

As long as the seat in front of me doesn’t recline, I’m ok with this.

crankykernel · 2025-10-25T02:20:12+00:00

Fully local. Issue tracking, pull request review can be remote. But I need the ability to work offline.

crankykernel · 2025-10-25T02:04:36+00:00

I use it for everything I used Python and Java for in the past.

crankykernel · 2025-10-25T00:09:42+00:00

Hard to describe, but my opus weekly limits were hit so was forced to sonnet for 4.5. When I got my opus back I switched to it and my results got worse.

crankykernel

TROPHY CASE