--- author: '' category: '' date: 2010/09/28 15:55 description: '' link: '' priority: '' slug: BB922 tags: programming, python title: I would be a sellout, but there's not much demand. type: text updated: 2010/09/28 15:55 url_type: '' --- .. raw:: html For Sale Portobello Mkt
For Sale Portobello Mkt by Jason Jones, under a CC-by-nc-sa license. It would be natural to anyone who doesn't know me to believe I live a life of luxury, international travel and exotic pleasures [1]_ but there is a small thing I am kinda ashamed of: I hardly ever got paid to code. Really! Most of the money I live on has absolutely nothing to do with whatever you read about on my blog. I make my living doing things like installing Asterisk in call centers, or configuring MySQL replication, or configuring VPNs using assorted piece-of-crap routers and by all means if you need that kind of work done, please contact `Net Managers `_ we are freaky good at it and charge reasonable rates. But while I like that kind of thing [2]_ I like other things better. I like programming much more than I like configuring Asterisk! Then again, I am not a really great programmer. I am just about an average coder, except that I am faster than most. And lately, an interesting phenomenon has taken place. How much money I earned thanks to my first 14 years of open source and free software development? $0 [3]_ How much money have I earned in the last year of FLOSS development? $500 (and it is bound to be more than that soon). To a first-worlder that may seem like peanuts, but down here in the land of cheap beef, that's... about 100 pounds of good meat! Or 10 nice dinners in fine restaurants for me and my wife. [4]_ I am wondering, is this part of a trend? Have others been receiving more appreciation in the form of money lately? In any case, it's a great feeling when a work of love (and trust me, noone does something for 14 years for free if he doesn't love it) is appreciated. Just in case: this doesn't mean you have to pay me to get a bug fixed, or to get a feature implemented. However, it does mean that if you like or use any of my programs and want me to feel good about the time I spent writing them... well, you **can** just send me a nice email, I will be just as happy. Really! ------------- .. [1] I do! .. [2] And I do like it! It's like a grownup's version of Lego. .. [3] I did get boxed SuSE CD sets for a while but I actually lost money on them since I had to pay taxes. .. [4] To all those who have contributed I send my sincerest appreciation, and trust me that all this money has been wisely invested on having fun, cheap chinese gadgetry and chocolate mousse.