Development quote of the week

Looking at the active contributors to Open Source, the primary model is that either your job description includes working on designated open source projects so you’re paid to contribute as your day job or you were hired because of what you’ve already done in open source and contributing more is a tolerated use of your employer’s time, a third, and by far smaller group is people who work full-time on Open Source but fund themselves either by shared contributions like patreon or tidelift or by actively consulting on their projects. However, these models cover existing contributors and they’re not really a route to becoming a contributor because employers like certainty so they’re unlikely to hire someone with no track record to work on open source, and are probably not going to tolerate use of their time for developing random open source projects. This means that the route to becoming a contributor, like the route to becoming an artist, is to begin in your own time.