by awesomekling on 10/29/22, 5:28 PM with 193 comments
by marginalia_nu on 10/29/22, 6:30 PM
> I created a Patreon back in April of 2019. I felt a bit silly at the time, with thoughts like “who do I think I am” and “what am I even doing” echoing in my head. I still did it though. I was too curious to see what would happen, even though I expected nothing. Amazingly, a couple of people actually signed up!
I'm definitely relating to this experience. Feels hella pretentious and weird to set up donations. Was likewise surprised to actually get people sending me money. I guess the moral of the story is if you build cool things, people are willing to chip in.
by jstummbillig on 10/29/22, 8:27 PM
Sometimes I watch and listen intently, and learn a lot. Sometimes I zone a little. It's perfect. If you are interested in programming in general I can just highly recommend checking it out.
by longrod on 10/29/22, 6:23 PM
Building the next unicorn is awesome and all but in my opinion, this has it's own place. I am glad some people out there get to work on their dream projects and actually can make a living out it. Kudos to all the supporters, obviously.
I also love how focused SerenityOS is and what kind of audience it caters to. Some people might say, "make it for everyone" but that doesn't work most of the time. Having a focused audience allows a lot of freedom in the way of UX/DX, docs, communication etc. So I am glad Andreas set that down upfront.
by kristoff_it on 10/29/22, 7:38 PM
Andreas will eventually most definitely get a salary closer to what he could get elsewhere and in the meantime he doesn't have to compromise on his mental health by working for a company that forces him to write bad software on purpose.
It's a pretty sweet deal, and it's a shame only few of us have a chance to experience this.
by labrador on 10/29/22, 7:42 PM
I think what he's done is amazing for these reasons:
He's created a viable operating system with hundreds of contributers
He's supporting his family
He's got himself well out of isolation with a big community of people
Edit: forgot one. He's staying soberby ilrwbwrkhv on 10/29/22, 9:25 PM
by williamstein on 10/29/22, 9:24 PM
by julianeon on 10/29/22, 7:12 PM
by hardwaregeek on 10/30/22, 5:30 AM
by BaculumMeumEst on 10/29/22, 7:33 PM
by nasalter on 10/29/22, 8:16 PM
by edpichler on 10/29/22, 9:01 PM
by ThinkBeat on 10/30/22, 10:39 AM
There would seem to be great uncertainty in how much money he will make per month.
He does have multiple income streams which is great, but none of them fixed (I think).
I was a freelance / independent developer for a while, but I worried far too much about not having work that I wanted to have multiple projects going at the same time in case one got cancelled / ended.
However, they all kept getting extended, which was good but also bad.
I was working on 3 contracts concurrently. working from home and working 95% of the day I managed to to keep then all happy, but it was taking a toll with stress and no life outside of work.
I was making good money. Yet I was too risk adverse. Once they had all finished, I ran to a corporate job again. (which meant turning down several contracts offered)
I think most people on HN are a lot better at handling being a freelancer and being independent.
by sndo on 10/30/22, 8:50 AM
by Accacin on 10/29/22, 7:42 PM
by gigel82 on 10/29/22, 6:28 PM
That is below minimum wage in a place like Seattle for example ($14.49 / hour ~ $2,500 / month gross).
by pencilguin on 10/30/22, 4:19 AM
by trykondev on 10/29/22, 10:38 PM
by bilekas on 10/30/22, 9:18 AM
It's really great to see someone with such a passion being able to make a living from it.
by version_five on 10/29/22, 6:39 PM
I'd also add that this model - contribution supported - may work for people who have already built something great, but it dangerous to aspire too because some people just end up being beggars and optimizing for trying to get handouts ("buy me a coffee") instead of putting their project first* (to be clear, I don't think that's the case here)
*edit: not a unique problem to this model, same thing happens with "founders" trying to optimize for VC money instead of making something
by GekkePrutser on 10/29/22, 10:48 PM
I'd love to see a remake of HP-UX's VUE (there is in fact a remake of the later CDE, and CDE itself is open-sourced). And it has almost the same UI but it's much more boring than VUE. VUE was from HP had smooth non-serif fonts and wild colour schemes. CDE was a followup joint-venture from HP, Sun and IBM and as a result they made it much more businessy. Serif fonts and boring brownish colours.
But all these things are super niche obviously, and it's really good to hear that he can still make a living from it.
by sebazzz on 10/29/22, 8:01 PM
by toastal on 10/30/22, 2:09 AM
by brunojppb on 10/29/22, 10:25 PM
by asddubs on 10/29/22, 8:03 PM
I wonder why. I love SerenityOS but it doesn't seem the kind of thing a venture capitalist would be interested in
by gigatexal on 10/29/22, 6:46 PM
Break-even?! No, no, no. He's doing so much amazing work he should be making a lot more.
In any case, congrats on living the dream and working on things you can be proud of. I hope it never ends (or it ends on your terms).
by ultrasounder on 10/29/22, 7:55 PM
by sendfoods on 10/29/22, 8:44 PM
On an unrelated note, regarding your setup: which theme are you using in CLion? Thanks!
by rogerclark on 10/29/22, 7:32 PM
by tibbydudeza on 10/29/22, 9:22 PM
by yrgulation on 10/30/22, 3:27 AM
by consultSKI on 10/30/22, 4:50 PM
by CobaltFire on 10/29/22, 7:16 PM
He said he’s HAPPY doing this. For some people that, in itself, can be enough.
It feels like so many here are trying to convince others of their world view instead of accepting the one this person shared.
As someone in a position to do something similar: Thanks for sharing!
by vasco on 10/29/22, 7:49 PM
The classic.
by keepquestioning on 10/30/22, 10:32 AM
by DeathArrow on 10/30/22, 6:18 AM
I just newer see myself investing years in something just for fun. Supposing I'm rich and I don't need to work for money (which is not the case) I still want to work on something that people will find value using. The more people finding that something useful, the better.
Even when I wrote code just for learning or wrote a PoC, I tried to make it something usable by someone else.
It's not that what I do is great, is that I derive more joy from building something useful than from the mere process of building something.
To me code that sits unused is dead code and a loss of the most important human resource: time.
So I can see a value in writing something like Minix or a RTOS for microcontrollers or even research OSes, but I can't see value in writing another OS, browser engine and building a programming language to rewrite the OS in without a clear purpose.
There might be an entertaining value in it, a learning experience, fun but I guess you can derive all of that by working on something that has a purpose.
It's not a critique of the author, who I am sure it's a nice guy, and I wrote this hoping to be contradicted, hoping that someone can give me reasons why endeavors like this might be valuable.