Question about how to make a living from open source

[Jonathan Ben Avraham]

On Thu, 18 Sep 2014, tzahi ml wrote:

> Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 14:15:40 +0300
> From: tzahi ml <tzahi.ml at gmail.com>
> To: "linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il" <linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il>
> Subject: Question about how to make a living from open source
> 
> Hi All,I am in need of assistance.
> 
> I am currently working as a freelancer coding stuff in a company.
> However, although I am making good living, this does not scale much (and promotion is out of the question :) ).
> 
> Anyway, I am looking for ways to scale.

Be ready to drink a lot of coffee, and say goodby to your significant 
others (family).

> One of the ideas that were given to me is to compile couchbase or postgres and distribute the binaries with a support license. Find 4-5 customers which pay big bucks
> and make a living. Though, not much scale there either, unless i start taking employees...

Customers that pay big bucks work with suppliers who have big bucks. 
That's not you, so forget it. That is, large customers work with large 
suppliers. For example, you you have a quality solution, but a larger 
supplier has only a partial, poor quality solution, then the company with 
big bucks will buy from the larger supplier with the poor quality, partial 
solution and not you. That's how the business world works. Big business 
works with big business, small business works with small business. The 
size equation trumps quality and availability.

> Another idea is taking employees but people in the business are telling me i am better off staying a freelancer than taking employees. Not sure what is true here.

When you take employees you need to have enough money to pay them for at 
least two-months ahead. You will need to incorporate, and hire an office 
manager/secretary. Your employees get paid first. If there is any money 
left afterwards then you might get paid. Is this what you want to do? 
That's how you want to risk your savings? Having employees is like having 
children. You have to guide them, instruct them, motivate them and wipe 
their noses. Are you built for that?

> One other idea I had is hosting complex solutions for sites. Like postgresql couchbase etc... which is difficult for the average joe and making it scale like heroku
> etc...
> 
> Can someone give me a clue?

Yes. Reverse the process. Instead of wanting to "scale" and then looking 
for an idea, work on the idea first. If you have a great idea for a new 
technology or service then look for partners. And if you don't have a 
really great idea, forget about trying to scale.

That's not my 2 cents speaking. That's my NIS 600K debt speaking.

  - yba


> Thanks!
> 
> Tzahi Fadida.
> 
> 
>

-- 
  9590 8E58 D30D 1660 C349  673D B205 4FC4 B8F5 B7F9  ~. .~  Tk Open Systems
=}-------- Jonathan Ben-Avraham ("yba") ----------ooO--U--Ooo------------{=
mailto:yba at tkos.co.il tel:+972.52.486.3386 http://tkos.co.il skype:benavrhm
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