Thread by @imakefoss

Let's talk about FOSS sustainability. DISCLAIMER: Following personal opinion is based on my experience with #raylib and following multiple gamedev opensoft libraries and tools. My perception: most FOSS out there is hardly sustainable. But let me elaborate a bit on that... 1/n

I believe most #opensource projects originate from an individual passion to create something and share it with the world. That perspective is very different from a comercial product, that is usually conceived to generate some kind of short-term long-term revenue... 2/n

A passion-driven development leads to passion-based decisions and sometimes those decisions do not fit in a bussiness-centered market. I mean, lot of FOSS is not created with revenue in mind, so, trying to make it sustainable after some time is a hard task... 3/n

My experience with #raylib: To date I've put thousands of hours into the library, I can measure it quite accurately because I had a rented office to work on it and I even had a timetable to work there around 4-6 hours daily... (after my 6 hours job as a gamedev teacher) 4/n

After the first 5 years working on it, I had put so much time and money into #raylib that it couldn't be sustainable by most startups... but actually for me it was great, it was like doing a new career, learning things that I loved and creating something amazing! #passion 5/n

But I realize that this is not sustaible. How long can you stay motivated? How much passion do you need to keep working on the same project for 7 years, almost daily? In those years I've seen MANY similar #opensource projects in github that just stop updating after 3-4 years. 6/n

I checked a LOT of FOSS projects in the last years trying to find some formula to make #raylib sustainable, at least to get a minimum income to allow me to work on it fulltime. I haven't found it yet but I noticed several things that most sustainable FOSS have in common: 7/n

1. Great care for the product: Very nice web, detailed repo with lot of information, nice documentation.
2. A big community created around it. Usually through several social networks.
3. The FOSS allows user to generate revenue using it! And that's a very interesting point! 8/n

So, my perception is that FOSS that can be used to generate revenue in some way is more prone to become sustainable (through donations, contributors, supporters...) than projects that focus on other types of added value (i.e. experimentation, learning, testing...)... 9/n

#raylib is mostly used, afaik, by students and hobbyist, to enjoy games/graphics programing, it does not provide a simple way for users to generate revenue (I already tried it on @raylibtech) So, if I stop maintaining/supporting it, could it survive? Feel free to answer! ;) 10/10