This is why grants are really important. That usually means deliverables in a specific timeframe. To me, that elevates open source from a full-time hobby to a job.
Grants are great but are often not nearly enough and they can vanish from a year to another. You'd better secure other sources of income. Grants will also usually fund specific features of your product but not the whole thing.
Other kinds of income are also good ways to fund open source like service, consultancy, support and even paid open source apps (which works particularly well for apps that have enterprise oriented features, turns out it doesn't matter that the source code is available under a free software license if it's convenient enough to click and buy).
jraph|2 years ago
Other kinds of income are also good ways to fund open source like service, consultancy, support and even paid open source apps (which works particularly well for apps that have enterprise oriented features, turns out it doesn't matter that the source code is available under a free software license if it's convenient enough to click and buy).
Coincidentally, this is how I get paid :-)
Still, grants should not be ignored indeed.