Purely relying on donations is working dramatically better than attempting to build an awkward business model around open source software. It's too hard to do that when other companies with more capital/connections able to use all of our work for free would be competing with us.
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I don't think that was a viable approach with open source licensing. Donations are proving to be a viable approach. I'm planning on founding a non-profit organization so that companies can properly write off their donations and we can get Canadian grants for developer salaries.
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Contract work associated with the project wouldn't count as funding it. There might be other GrapheneOS developers interested in doing that until we can get more funding but it has never interested me. If I just wanted to get paid for doing work, then I'd be working at Google.
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I am glad that works out for you, but I am unconvinced we can rely on engineers being willing to take < 20% of market rate to power all of open source. I spend less than I make, but I also want to retire early, and I'm not willing to give up on that for age or mkcert.
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The market rate you're talking about largely only applies to people willing to relocate to the US and work for either a major tech company or VC funded startup. It isn't the market rate for the vast majority of developers and most people aren't going to immigrate to the US.
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I live in Canada and it would be easy to get a job in the US and to move there but that doesn't apply to most developers around the world.
People also have families they need to look after including more than their own kids in cultures with more emphasis on extended families.
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I know for a fact that it is entirely possible to make $750k/yr remotely from Canada for a senior engineer with a specialty, not at a FAANG. As in, I have seen the offer, and the other 3-4 $500k+ competing offers they were picking from.
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Honestly, I am kind of tired of having this discussion, though. I constantly keep tabs on the market to make these assessments, but get dismissed as out of touch by people who usually last interviewed 5+ years ago. The market has moved dramatically in the last 1-2 years alone.
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Anyway, I am happy that you are happy, and that your project is thriving. Believe me when I say it won't scale to the whole ecosystem that underpins the global economy, or don't :)
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I don't think you're wrong but rather you're looking at it from a US perspective and I don't think there are nearly enough fully remote opportunities to make that global.
I could be earning $250/hour doing contract work but it's a whole lot different than a stable full-time job.
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Worth noting Canada doesn't expect you to pay income tax on crowdfunding income where no product or service of any kind is provided to donors and it isn't closely tied to a business. Contract work is a business so even if I wanted to do it, it could create major tax problems.
Part of why I want to create a non-profit organization for receiving and distributing money to other developers to greatly reduce risk of the government being annoying.
I already had to spend money on legal fees dealing with them and they ended up having to reimburse some money.
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If I receive and distribute 1 million dollars to other developers and then the government decides that was income that I need to pay taxes on, then regardless of it not being legally taxable income it would be a substantial problem. Thankfully it's nearly all BTC / XMR...
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