Wait, if you are getting paid for adding features or fixing stuff on the OSS code, that's time spent on the project. And chances are that if somebody is willing to pay something, many other people will find use for it.
Sounds good in isolation, but as others have mentioned, in some (most?) places, accepting money like that would be considered a professional activity, and you suddenly must worry about a host of other distracting things that take time, effort, and preoccupations: incorporating, tax filings, invoicing.
Or you could pay someone to manage it for you, but you're still suddenly involving yourself in stuff that you hadn't even had the interest or intention to do anyways.
In my European country, for example, having a regular source of revenue [1] requires registering with the government as an independent contractor, which costs a bit less than 400€/month. Then you will need to extend invoices, with the consequence of having to worry about VAT (consulting is a service? I guess so it incurs in VAT), make VAT tax filings each trimester, store invoices for several years in case they are requested.
One day you look back and think "but, but, I just wanted to spend a couple hours per week on small consulting requests!". As a consequence, people are greatly discouraged if it's not going to be a serious path to make serious money.
[1]: Yes, revenue, i.e. regardless of profit, and in theory also regardless of amount, albeit in practice they won't enforce it for measly revenues if they are roughly below 1000€/month.
> In my European country, for example, having a regular source of revenue [1] requires registering with the government as an independent contractor, which costs a bit less than 400€/month.
I apologize, but I actually can't believe that. Maybe you have misinterpreted some regulation or base it on hearsay? If that is truly the case, then your main goal right now should be to escape to a free country as soon as you can.
Either way, some paid OSS work can't count as regular income. But if the place where you live is like what you told, the taxman is probably gonna come and get you, to milk some money no matter if you followed the rules or not.
I made a 100€ mistake in there. I misremembered the amount to be 365€, but it actually was 265€ when I worked as such, some years ago. Fares and benefits have been slowly rising over time, and seems that now the rate is 294€ [1].
There is a lot of contention between organizations of self-employed people and the government. Of course, paying that amount regardless of actual profits seems crazy. On the other hand, it goes to pay the public healthcare services which allows things like spending whatever amount of time needed for treatment in a hospital and not pay a single dime for it. All a matter of pros and cons.
Another issue is that software developers are sometimes paid highly and are in top tax bracket. In New Zealand the top marginal tax rate is 39% (although I am guessing most software devs would be on 33% (Over $70,000 and up to $180,000) even at 33% it is not so motivating to be offered $1000 if $330 of that immediately disappears as taxes. Plus the hassle of recording amounts and declaring them - uggggh.
In California that top marginal tax rate is 13.3% so not quite the same problem as some other countries.
> it is not so motivating to be offered $1000 if $330 of that immediately disappears
I get how 1000 is better than 670, but on the flip side, that's 670 extra that you didn't have before, right
If it's about where the line falls, I guess you could only accept a minimum of $1492, so after the 33% cut you get $1000 :)
But yeah, as mentioned in my other sibling comments, I believe that the administrative burden itself might be enough of a barrier for lots of people to prefer skipping the problem altogether.
Great thread and feedback re: administrative considerations. I believe it's our job at Polar to streamline this as much as we can leveraging Stripe Tax, Atlas and more. Of course, it's a massive topic and each country is unique, but give us time and we'll hopefully make things easier than they are today within OSS.
Re: expectation around getting the same $ as for a paid salary as an engineer today. We cannot expect it from Day 1. It's a new pattern. However, since maintainers are in complete control (it's not a traditional bounty service) sponsored issues that are accepted should align with efforts the maintainer wants to pursue too. Before they got $0. Now, they better know what their users want and can get them to sponsor efforts that align with theirs. In addition, we want to support maintainers being able to set explicit "goals" (Kickstarter). You can achieve this today by adding such context as you add Polar to certain issues, but we can streamline it even further.
