How open source software developers earn?

[icett]

I wish to know how the the people who develop open source software earn? Of course there must be some incentive for them to do so much hard work and giving time on developing software. They can't do it for free. So how they make their living? Anyone have any idea?:confused:

[DoctorMO]

You ideas about selling products get in the way of your understanding.

What exists can be given away for free
What does not exist costs money to develop

Do you want something done in the open source world? because it's not free.

[-grubby]

they don't get paid anything. The only thing I can think of is getting an alternative source of income (e.g.spouse's job) or not working on the open source project full time and making money elsewhere with another job

[LaRoza]

They can sell the service, i.e, the Apache developers selling hosting instead of the software.

Most programmers get paid to write software that is never sold.

[az]

Software developers get paid regardless of whether the software is a shrink-wrapper software product that will be sold, or software that will be never sold (used internally) or software that is free-libre.

The value in software is in making a computer do something. People always have been - and always will be - willing to pay for that. The sale price of shelfware is not true value. It is artificial.

The software developer gets paid for his/her day's work, not whether the program happens to be for sale or not.

A recent study showed that only a very small percentage of software developers (all within the same pay scale and therefore skill level) work for a project that will end up for-sale on the shelf.

[osxcapades]

This is one of my main issues with OSS. Licenses like the GPL explicitly allow OSS software to be sold commercially, but in practice this is very difficult (for obvious reasons). I imagine that people who develop OSS in general don't earn anywhere near as much as proprietary software developers do.

[LaRoza]

I imagine that people who develop OSS in general don't earn anywhere near as much as proprietary software developers do.

That depends on the project. I bet OSS developers are much happier working though. They do it because the like to and care about it, not because some company pays them and gives them weird rules to follow.

[DoctorMO]

This is one of my main issues with OSS. Licenses like the GPL explicitly allow software to be sold commercially, but in practice this is very difficult (for obvious reasons). I imagine that people who develop OSS in general don't earn anywhere near as much as proprietary software developers do.

Really? funny that because I've been paid good money in the past to build open source solutions and one of Canonicals businesses is selling custom development support which isn't cheap and nor are the developers that end up building it and then releasing it as open source.

It isn't the end result that costs money it's the movement between where we were to where we are.

[p_quarles]

This is one of my main issues with OSS. Licenses like the GPL explicitly allow software to be sold commercially, but in practice this is very difficult (for obvious reasons). I imagine that people who develop OSS in general don't earn anywhere near as much as proprietary software developers do.
Like LaRoza said, this depends on the project. Red Hat, though, does quite well for itself, netting nearly $80 million last year.

http://finance.google.com/finance?q=RHT

EDIT: I should point out, too, that RHEL is not only fully open source, but there's an easily available free clone called CentOS. Doesn't hurt Red Hat's business.

[igknighted]

This is one of my main issues with OSS. Licenses like the GPL explicitly allow OSS software to be sold commercially, but in practice this is very difficult (for obvious reasons). I imagine that people who develop OSS in general don't earn anywhere near as much as proprietary software developers do.

Again, you miss the point. The value the company that is paying the developer gets from the software the developer writes is not just what they sell it for. As has been said, most software is never sold commercially (it gets used internally or is OSS). The developers make their money the same either way.

Also, don't forget that many open-source developers are hobbyists. They write a program to solve their own problem, then instead of keeping the code they share it with others so everyone can benefit. So it was never intended to be a product in these cases.

[ExpatPaul]

Software developers get paid regardless of whether the software is a shrink-wrapper software product that will be sold, or software that will be never sold (used internally) or software that is free-libre.


A recent study showed that only a very small percentage of software developers (all within the same pay scale and therefore skill level) work for a project that will end up for-sale on the shelf.

What he said.

The vast majority of software developers work either in the company where the software will be used (not a software house) or are independent contractors working on a specific project for a specific client. And we get salaries, not commissions.

[az]

http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/ict/policy/doc/2006-11-20-flossimpact.pdf

Quote:
"Proprietary packaged software firms account for well below 10% of employment of software developers in the U.S., and "IT user" firms account for over 70% of software developers employed with a similar salary (and thus skill) level. This suggests a relatively low potential for cannibalisation of proprietary software jobs by FLOSS, and suggests a relatively high potential for software developer jobs to become increasingly FLOSSrelated. FLOSS and proprietary software show a ratio of 30:70 (overlapping) in recent job postings indicating significant demand for FLOSS-related skills."

[pratik2222]

simple..
Using open source, the open source software developers don't need to start coding from scratch. They can use pre-written code from thousands of open source developers and use it as a benchmark for further development. This way the emphasis is on the real problem to be solved & not on coding. This also allows OSS developers to deliver results in minimum possible time.

hope that helps u,
regards,
Pratik
*life is short of time..