Open-source projects can be a good source of income for us. Sometimes, we might think that keeping the code open is a bad idea because anyone can steal the ideas. But there is this group of people who build everything open source, and they think that enough money can be made with open source projects as well.
I have seen examples of such projects, and I have also seen people benefit from open-source projects through their regular contributions.
Bounty for open source contribution
Some projects might have a bounty assigned to them. If we work on some feature or a requirement, there is a high chance that we can get some amount paid. Mostly this happens in some projects that we use on a day-to-day basis. We might be familiar with the code and at the same time if we are going to earn some money from it. It is a good thing to do.
Sometimes some projects might be open source and they might have some specific problem that needs to be solved. They announce a bounty and whoever completes the work will get the bounty.
Sponsored by big companies
Let's say you create a project and would like to keep it open source. If there are no competitive projects available, people might use your product and would be happy to do so. Some big companies will also start to use such projects. When they are doing it, they make sure the project is well funded so that the maintenance and fixes happen quite often.
I have seen a few start up companies fully sponsored by some big people. These sponsors basically run the entire show behind the screen.
Selling premium paid versions on top of open-source
We can have a code base that can be of two types. The base codebase can be made available for free and open source. There can be some premium features on top of that which will need additional cost. So this way people can create an open source project and still add some premium features to that project and earn. Some people would like to support people who are doing open-source projects. Those people can also support more by purchasing premium paid versions.
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