The End of Gratipay
I've been trying to figure out how to get paid to do open source for a long time. The popularity of my open source projects has changed over this time, but this might give you an idea of the effectiveness of each approach if you need an alternative.<p>I used Gittip for a while, and it was a really nice platform, and netted me $5-15/month if I recall correctly. I left after some regulatory issues added an annoying amount of mental gymnastics to actually get money out of it. Later I built my own self-hosted platform for getting tips [1][2]. This tends to net me $20/month consistently, with occasional bursts due to one-time donations. Also, I know of at least one other installation in the wild, it's being used to support some Mastodon instances.<p>A few months ago, I set up a Patreon [3] where I earn almost $200/month. This is by far the most successful approach I've seen yet, though it rustles my jimmies a bit to be beholden to a proprietary, centralized service. In the end I'm still not making enough to work on open source full time. Thankfully I make enough today to break even on open source (that is, my infrastructural costs are paid for). Hopefully I can figure something out for full time eventually. It's <i>hard</i>.<p>Many thanks to the folks at Gratipay. It was an uphill battle for sure but they fought the good fight.<p>[1] <a href="https://drewdevault.com/donate" rel="nofollow">https://drewdevault.com/donate</a><p>[2] <a href="https://github.com/SirCmpwn/fosspay" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/SirCmpwn/fosspay</a><p>[3] <a href="https://patreon.com/sircmpwn" rel="nofollow">https://patreon.com/sircmpwn</a>