Making a Living Building Open Source Software?

asimbaig asks: "When I started my IT Staffing and Placement firm last year, I couldn't find a decent Applicant Tracking System (ATS) or an Open Source alternative. I then found SugarCRM, and was blown away by its power and ease of use. Partly frustrated with the existing vendors and partly inspired by SugarCRM, I decided to write that ATS using LAMP. 6 months and 45k lines of code later, I have just released the preview of industry's first Open Source ATS/HR Management system, called CATS. Now, it will be an interesting experiment to see if I can actually make a living out of it and move away from my IT staffing business. SugarCRM seems to be doing well, so why not?. Is anyone out there making a living from writing Open Source code?"

Comments

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[JumpingBull]

You have the basic elements for a business already in place. The current problem is making all the pieces fit together. Balancing the components will be an ongoing task.

You seem to have:

• Contacts and clients in the industry
• A cash flow
• Fundamental knowledge of the staffing process and the technology needed to support this
• The understanding that this is a niche market, and is more service oriented

Assuming that all these factors are true, it would seem to follow that using a service model may be the best use of your time. The staffing part of your business is the best place to finesse your design, introduce this service to your clients (perhaps as a web enabled application/service) and to discern where the best revenue stream lies.

The only other bit of advice is to see where your energy levels peak. If you like the mix of all these activities then you're in the right place. If however parts of the efforts are draining and irksome then that should be cause for reflection.
Any business will take more then you expect, but if you're enjoying it, it's a blessing.
If not, it would just get more and more draining every day.

Give away the software, sell the services

[TapestryDude]

I make 100% of my income off two open source projects: Tapestry and HiveMind. Apache owns the copyright, but the license is free (ASL 2.0). I make my living doing training and project work. This has paid my bills for over two years now.

It's not for the faint hearted; my job window is always just a couple of months out but doesn't seem to be drying up either. And you need to be a triple threat: able to code, and to teach and mentor ... and to market! There's no way to tell if you can pull this off without trying.

Even so, my wife has to work (mostly to get health insurance for us).

I love the freedom, especially from PHBs ... but there are also occasions where I feel trapped by my choice. I'll need to come up with something else, someday, but in the meantime I'm loving life. You mileage may vary.