I’ve been working on open-source software for 5 years now and I’m still going. It’s not something I had ever imagined I’d be doing or even intended to do but somehow we’re here and I thought I’d share some of that story with you.

我从事开源软件开发已有5年了，现在仍在继续。 这不是我曾经想像的事情，甚至不是我打算做的事情，但是某种程度上我们在这里，我想我会和你分享一些故事。

I’ve previously talked about what Micro is, how that journey began and what the future looks like for the project so I won’t repeat that here but the TLDR;

之前，我曾讨论过Micro是什么，该旅程是如何开始的以及该项目的未来情况，所以在这里我不会重复TLDR；

Micro is an open source framework for cloud native development and M3O (m3o.com) is “Micro as a Service” aka the future business model.

Micro是用于云原生开发的开源框架， M3O ( m3o.com )是“ Micro as a Service”，即未来的商业模型。

What I’ll cover is what it means to build open source software, the true reality of that if you come to do it, the burden it places on maintainers and how you escape that reality to build a real business or walk away from it all.

我要讲的是构建开源软件的意义，实现开源软件的真实事实，它给维护人员带来的负担以及如何逃避现实以建立真正的业务或放弃一切。

我们不要糖衣 (Let’s not sugar coat it)

Open source is hard. Really hard. I’m not talking about the weekend hack you throw up on GitHub, slap an MIT license on and call “open source”. I’m talking about the multi-year effort of maintaining a single project that has thousands if not hundreds of thousands who come to rely upon it. It is a brutal, thankless job that no one wants to pay you for and even less want to contribute an iota of gratitude back by some pennies in a tip jar to keep you going. So why does anyone do it? I can only speak to my own motivations, so let’s delve into that.

开源很难。 真的很难。 我不是在谈论您在GitHub上发布的周末黑客，在MIT上拍打MIT许可证并称其为“开源”。 我说的是维护一个项目的多年努力，这个项目有成千上万(如果不是成千上万的话)要依靠它。 这项工作是一项残酷，无情的工作，没人愿意支付您的钱，更不用说要给小费罐里的几分钱加分的感激之情了，以使您继续前进。 那么为什么有人这样做呢？ 我只能说说自己的动机，所以让我们深入研究一下。

Firstly why is open source hard? I have come to have a deep respect for open source maintainers. Especially those like Salvatore Sanfilippo, the author of Redis, who recently came to the end of his journey after more than a decade of maintaining the project. I will never forget the words he once spoke on stage in relation to managing open source issues he did not want to comment on, “I close them in my mind”. To anyone who is not a maintainer this sounds like a preposterous statement.

首先，为什么开源很难？ 我已经对开源维护者产生了深深的敬意。 尤其是像Redis的作者Salvatore Sanfilippo这样的人 ，在维持了十多年的项目之后，最近才走到了尽头 。 我将永远不会忘记他曾经在舞台上谈到他不想评论的开源问题时所说的话：“我闭上了脑海”。 对于任何不是维护者的人来说，这听起来都是荒谬的。

“How could anyone do that? How dare you not respond? How dare you not answer my question?! Do you realise who I am! I’m the freeloading keyboard warrior who is within their God given right to give you my opinion and comment on what your software should be doing and you should fix it right now for free because I say so.”

“谁能做到这一点？ 你怎么不回应 你怎么不回答我的问题？ 你知道我是谁吗？ 我是自由装载的键盘战士，在他们的上帝之内，有权给您我对软件应该做什么的看法和评论，您应该立即免费修复它，因为我这样说。”

Yup… I also close the issues in my mind now and unsubscribe to all those GitHub notifications. Look, we’re not saying we’re not grateful for having users of our software. When I started out, I was so nervous because I’d never shipped “open source” software before. I never felt like I was good enough to write something that could even be remotely considered usable by anyone else. But then it happened and boy oh boy was I excited. I answered every question within minutes, I was on slack and github like a hawk. You should have seen my GitHub streak, it went on for 100+ days. People commented on how responsive I was and it was an amazing feeling to have them use my software.

是的…我现在也想解决这个问题，并退订所有这些GitHub通知。 瞧，我们并不是说我们对拥有我们软件的用户不感激。 当我刚开始的时候，我非常紧张，因为我以前从未发行过“开源”软件。 我从来没有觉得自己足够擅长编写任何东西都可以被其他人远程使用的东西。 但是后来发生了，男孩，男孩，我很兴奋。 我在几分钟之内回答了每个问题，我像鹰一样呆在松弛和github上。 您应该已经看到了我的GitHub连胜记录，它持续了100多天。 人们评论了我的React速度，让他们使用我的软件真是一种了不起的感觉。

So what happened? I’ll tell you what happened… burnout.

所以发生了什么事？ 我告诉你发生了什么...倦怠。

燃尽 (Burning out)

You know it, I know it, we all know it. Burnout. The enemy of the developer. The thing that inevitably catches up to all of us when we do anything long enough. Is it a lack of work/life balance? Is it some other cliche turn of phrase that we’ve all come to know or an NYTimes articles circulated on HN and Twitter has surmised. The truth, and my belief, burnout happens when you don’t feel you’re being adequately rewarded for the work done and time spent.

你知道，我知道，我们都知道。 燃尽。 开发人员的敌人。 当我们做足够长时间的事情时，不可避免地会赶上我们所有人。 是否缺乏工作/生活平衡？ 是大家都知道的其他一些陈词滥调，还是HN和Twitter上流传的《纽约时报》上的一篇文章推测。 事实就是我的信念，精疲力尽是当您不觉得自己因完成的工作和所花费的时间而获得足够的回报时发生的。

Burnout is real. It’s painful. And I really wish I had better answers for how you escape it. I didn’t have work/life balance and I’ve never felt I was adequately rewarded for my efforts but hey the world isn’t fair, that’s not how this whole money printing machine works. Capitalism requires wealth to skew to the minority of individuals while the majority do the grunt work. I felt that, even as a cog in the machine at Google. You think that world filled with its 1st world problems is better but honestly, its just another machine relying on menial software engineering work to keep it going. When they figure out how to use Jeff Dean’s Google Brain to run the entire org they’ll cut every non essential engineering role they can. But anyway we’re getting away from the point.

倦怠是真实的。 这是痛苦的。 我真的希望我对您如何摆脱它有更好的答案。 我没有工作/生活的平衡，我从来没有觉得自己的努力得到了足够的回报，但是嘿，世界不公平，这不是这台整体印钞机的工作原理。 资本主义要求财富向少数人倾斜，而大多数人则从事艰巨的工作。 即使在Google的机器中，我也感到如此。 您认为充满第一世界问题的世界会更好，但老实说，这只是依靠专门的软件工程工作来保持运转的另一台机器。 当他们弄清楚如何使用Jeff Dean的Google Brain来运营整个组织时，他们将削减所有可能的非关键工程职位。 但是无论如何，我们正在远离这一点。

For me work was an all consuming thing and open source was no different. I did it with no pay for the first 10 months and then lucked out with a sponsor to keep me going for the next 3 years after that. In that time, I went from no money, to minimum wage, to eventually earning what I had done before quitting my job in 2015 using some nice R&D tax jiggery to make the numbers works. Trust me when I say you really don’t want to have to fill out your own R&D tax credit forms just to save £15k so that can go in your pocket instead.

对我来说，工作是一件费力的事情，而开源也没有什么不同。 在最初的10个月中，我没有任何报酬，然后很幸运地与赞助商合作，使我在接下来的3年中都能继续工作。 在那段时间里，我从没有钱到最低工资，最终赚到了自己所做的工作，然后在2015年辞职之前使用了一些不错的研发税收手段使这些数字生效。 相信我，当我说您真的不想只为了节省15,000英镑而填写自己的R＆D税收抵免表时，它就可以放在您的口袋里。

When you’re earning very little money as a highly skilled individual, it doesn’t matter whether its willingly or not, you’re still suffering all the same. Minimalism becomes your life, and you justify it as a choice. Oh that super trendy minimalistic life, where you own nothing but your laptop and some books. Maybe you don’t even have a bed, because what’s cool about sleeping on a comfy bed.

当您作为一个高技能人士只赚很少的钱时，不管是否愿意，您仍然会遭受同样的痛苦。 极简主义成为您的生活，您有理由选择它。 哦，那超时尚的简约生活，除了笔记本电脑和书本，什么都没有。 也许您甚至没有床，因为睡在舒适的床上真是太酷了。

Open source is an unsustainable game for the individual, and I learned that the hard way. I didn’t set out to work on open source, I wanted to raise funding, build a platform, change the world. But that wasn’t in the cards for me and I stubbornly refused to accept it, doing whatever it took to get my opportunity. I sacrificed my health, my sanity and my salary to make it happen. So my advice to you kids, if you’re reading this and you’re thinking it would be super cool to quit your job to work on open source or build a startup, don’t, because it will be one of the hardest things you’ll ever do in your life and I’ll tell you this, life’s hard enough without willingly tripping yourself up and wasting years of your life in the process.

开源对于个人来说是一种不可持续的游戏，我了解到这很困难。 我没有打算从事开源工作，我想筹集资金，建立平台，改变世界。 但这对我来说并不重要，我固执地拒绝接受它，尽一切努力获得机会。 为了实现这一目标，我牺牲了自己的健康，理智和薪水。 因此，我给您的孩子们的建议是，如果您正在阅读此书，并且认为放弃工作去开源或创建一家初创公司将是一件很酷的事情，请不要这样做，因为这将是最困难的事情之一您将一生毕生，我会告诉您的是，生活足够艰难，而又不会在旅途中随意跳槽并浪费自己的生命。

作为维护者生存 (Surviving as a maintainer)

Alright so I’ve painted you the “staring into the abyss and chewing glass” thing which either Elon Musk or some other random wannabe professed at some point in a PandoDaily interview. But what’s the truth about surviving when working on open source, if you really want to go that path. Well I’ll tell you…

好吧，所以我为您描绘了“凝视深渊并咀嚼玻璃杯”的东西，Elon Musk或其他一些随便想要在PandoDaily采访中宣称的东西。 但是，如果您真的想走这条路，那么在开源上生存时的真实情况是什么？ 好吧，我告诉你...

Firstly let’s talk through financials, then we’ll get onto the mental side of things. Financially you need savings, because on day 1, nobody is going to pay, in fact open source is free, so no one is EVER going to pay but let’s just start with, nobody is going to pay you. Secondly once you’ve started to burn through your savings, you’re going to have to beg. Today we call that donations or sponsors, but really it’s just a nice way of saying beg. Beg for money from the freeloaders using your software, beg the industry to give you a minute of their time and $10/month just so you can pay to eat lunch out one day a week. Was there a third? Hmm, well, no you’re just going to have to keep begging.

首先让我们讨论财务问题，然后再探讨事物的心理方面。 从财务上讲，您需要储蓄，因为在第1天，没有人要付款，实际上开源是免费的，因此没有人要付款，但让我们开始吧，没有人要付款。 其次，一旦您开始消耗掉您的积蓄，就必须乞讨。 今天，我们将其称为捐赠或赞助者，但实际上，这只是一种乞求的好方法。 向使用您的软件的免费下载程序讨价还价，恳请业界给您一分钟的时间和每月10美元的费用，以便您可以支付每周一周的午餐时间。 有三分之一吗？ 嗯，嗯，不，你只需要继续乞讨。

Unless you’re the maintainer of one of the most popular projects on GitHub, you are going to struggle to find real sponsors. And by real sponsors, I mean people who are going to dish out $100k/year to keep you going. People might throw $1k or even $10k at you here or there but that’s not going to pay your rent forever, or even a couple months in SF. And these people are likely making one off donations because it proves useful to them in that moment, because what they really want is support. RedHat as the first true business built around open source sold support, that’s it, nothing more, they package a distribution of linux and provided support and that’s how they survived. It can work but do you really want to sit around offering support or do you want to build software?

除非您是GitHub上最受欢迎的项目之一的维护者，否则您将很难找到真正的赞助者。 对于真正的赞助商，我的意思是说每年要花掉10万美元来维持运营的人们。 人们可能会在这里或那里向您扔出$ 1,000甚至$ 10,000的费用，但这不会永远付您的租金，甚至在SF中也不会付您几个月的费用。 这些人很可能会一次性捐款，因为那一刻对他们有用，因为他们真正想要的是支持。 RedHat是第一个基于开源构建的真正的业务，它出售了支持，仅此而已，他们打包了Linux发行版并提供了支持，这就是他们赖以生存的方式。 它可以工作，但是您真的想坐下来提供支持还是要构建软件？

赞助商 (Sponsors)

Sponsors who offer you a lot of money are looking for two things, they want to know the project is going to be around for the while and they want support. I was fortunate enough to have a corporate sponsor after the first year but it was for those reasons and getting that sponsor was based on a prior relationship. In the years after I naively thought I could get more $100k/year sponsorships from other enterprises, I’ll tell you that was a huge mistake and a waste of time on my part. Nobody is willingly going to pay you money for your open source software.

为您提供大量资金的赞助商正在寻找两件事情，他们想知道该项目将会持续一段时间，并且他们需要支持。 我很幸运在第一年之后有了一个公司赞助商，但是正是由于这些原因，让这个赞助商是基于先前的关系。 在我天真地以为我可以从其他企业获得每年10万美元的赞助后的几年里，我会告诉你，这是一个巨大的错误，浪费了我的时间。 没有人愿意为您的开源软件付钱。

Let me say that again…

让我再说一遍…

NO ONE IS GOING TO WILLINGLY PAY YOU FOR YOUR FREE SOFTWARE

没有人愿意为您的免费软件付费

The logic makes no sense. Why would they pay for a free thing. You have to convince people that what you’re building is so compelling that they need to pay for you the author, the creator, to help them in the long term. That’s the only way those sponsorships work. Convince the buyer that with you, their life is much easier, and without you, they’re going to live a slow and painful existence.

逻辑没有道理。 他们为什么要花免费的钱。 您必须说服人们，您所构建的内容非常引人注目，以至于他们需要为您(即创作者)付费，以长期帮助他们。 那是这些赞助工作的唯一方式。 说服买家，有了您，他们的生活会轻松得多，没有您，他们将过着缓慢而痛苦的生活。

Most open source maintainers don’t know how to sell, so to sell yourself like that when you’ve likely never had to before is tough. I thought I knew sales, well apparently not because no one wanted to buy what Asim Aslam was selling. Don’t fall into this trap the way I did.

大多数开源维护者都不知道如何销售，因此在您可能从未有过的这种情况下出售自己很难。 我以为我知道销售情况，显然不是因为没人愿意购买Asim Aslam出售的产品。 不要像我那样陷入陷阱。

After coming to this realisation…what should you do? Well I don’t know about that but, I can only tell you what I did. I tried to sell something.

意识到这一点之后……该怎么办？ 好吧，我对此一无所知，但我只能告诉你我做了什么。 我试图卖东西。

卖东西 (Sell something)

We’re still talking about surviving as a maintainer, so don’t worry, we’ll get to the mental part soon, but for now let’s move on to trying to make money.

我们仍在谈论要以维护者的身份生存，所以不用担心，我们会尽快进入精神方面，但是现在让我们继续尝试赚钱。

Ah yes, selling a “product”. Let’s be clear. You don’t have a product. You have a project. You have a free open source project that anyone can download and use, which anyone can fork and no one needs your help to use. So what do you do? Well I’ll tell you…build proprietary features.

是的，卖“产品”。 让我们清楚一点。 您没有产品。 您有一个项目。 您有一个免费的开源项目，任何人都可以下载和使用，任何人都可以分叉，并且没有人需要您的帮助才能使用。 所以你会怎么做？ 好吧，我告诉你…建立专有功能。

A product is something people are willing to buy, and the tried and tested model for open source is either run it as a service or sell proprietary features on top of the open source aka open core. As one person I didn’t feel confident people were going to buy a hosted service from me or that I even had the money to make that work (can you believe that), but I did think someone would pay for proprietary stuff on top.

产品是人们愿意购买的东西，经过实践检验的开放源代码模型既可以作为服务运行，也可以在开放源代码(也称为开放核心)之上出售专有功能。 作为一个人，我没有信心让人们从我这里购买托管服务，或者我什至没有钱去做这项工作(您可以相信)，但是我确实认为有人会为专有产品付费。

Wait, what about the support or consulting you say? That’s what my corporate sponsorship was about, plus the thousands in my slack community and the countless others filing issues on GitHub. So the truth was, I didn’t want to sell myself in that way anymore than I had done. Support is fairly exhausting and I wanted to move beyond the laborious, get paid for the hours you work, thing.

等等，您说的支持或咨询如何？ 这就是我的公司赞助的目的，再加上我闲散的社区中的成千上万，以及无数其他人在GitHub上提出问题。 所以事实是，我不想再以这种方式推销自己。 支持是相当疲惫的，我想摆脱繁琐的工作，在工作中得到报酬。

Anyway back to product. So I packaged together some proprietary features, put it in another repo with a different license and setup a stripe subscription. What could go wrong? lol. I priced at $25/month for the unit of value, in my case per service. I included support… what did I just say about support. Here I thought, people will be paying thousands, hundreds of thousands for this proprietary stuff, which surely, surely they could not build themselves and I would make out as a bandit in my new lifestyle business. That’s not what happened.

无论如何回到产品。 因此，我将一些专有功能打包在一起，将其放入具有不同许可证的另一个存储库中，并设置条带订阅。 可能出什么问题了？ 大声笑。 对于每个服务，我以每月25美元的价格定价。 我提供了支持……我刚刚说了有关支持的内容。 在这里，我想人们会为这种专有的东西付出成千上万的代价，这肯定会，他们肯定无法建立自己，我会在我的新生活方式业务中成为强盗。 没什么事

Turns out, when someone pays for your product they feel you have an obligation to support them and in a way you do, but if you’re not clear on the level of support this quickly escalates to making every waking moment of your life a living hell. That’s what I encountered. If you’re going to put a product out there, you better be ready to support it, I wasn’t. I was burned out, I was toast and grasping at straws to build a business out of something that had become a pretty decent solo maintained open source effort.

事实证明，当有人为您的产品付款时，他们会觉得您有义务支持他们并以某种方式提供支持，但是如果您不清楚支持的程度，那么这很快就会升级为使您生活中的每一个清醒时刻都成为生活地狱。 那就是我遇到的。 如果您打算将产品放在那里，最好准备好支持它，我不是。 我很精疲力尽，我敬酒，不停地吸管，用一种已经成为相当不错的独奏的东西来维持业务，这是开源的努力。

I shut that effort down pretty quickly. I knew it wasn’t my thing. I had set out to build a platform, ended up with a nice open source project and a sponsor that let me do pretty much whatever I wanted. But I wasn’t happy, as I mentioned, I was burned out.

我很快就关闭了这项工作。 我知道那不是我的事。 我开始构建一个平台，最后得到了一个不错的开源项目和一个赞助商，让我几乎可以做我想做的任何事情。 但是我不高兴，正如我提到的那样，我已经精疲力尽了。

Open source is hard and open source survival while mostly about being able to keep yourself financially afloat while fighting the barrage of support issues is otherwise all about managing your mental well being. So I did the thing most of us should really do many times per year, I checked out.

开源是艰苦的工作，也是开源的生存之道，而主要与能够在解决支持问题的斗争中保持自己的财务状况有关，这全都在于管理您的心理健康。 因此，我签出了我们大多数人每年确实应该做的很多事情。

休息一下 (Get ye some rest)

As human beings there is only so much stress we can endure. Physical stress. Mental stress. Have you ever run flat out? How far did you run? It wasn’t forever right. Well your mind is only capable of so much. At a certain point it’s either going to give out or you’re going to have to tap out. When I hit the wall, and I can’t count the number of times its happened in my life now, but I just had to stop. I had nothing left. And this is the real lesson for all you open source maintainers out there and an even bigger life lesson for everyone else. When it all gets too much, when you are at the end of your wits, when you can’t take anymore, just stop. There is nothing, absolutely nothing that should drive you to the edge of your sanity, so much so that you question whether you should even here. If you’re reading this article, you’re living a life of privilege. One with an internet connection, a phone, a laptop, probably sipping on an overpriced coffee you could have made yourself. Nothing should take you to a place where you don’t see another way out.

作为人类，我们只能承受如此多的压力。 身体压力。 精神压力。 你有没有跑出来吗？ 你跑了多远？ 这不是永远正确的。 好吧，您的思维只有这么多能力。 在某个时候，它要么放弃，要么你必须挖掘。 当我撞墙时，我无法数出它在我生命中发生的次数，但我只得停下来。 我一无所有。 这是您所有开源维护人员的真正教训，也是其他所有人的更大教训。 当一切变得太多时，当您精疲力尽时，当您无法忍受时，就停下来。 没有什么，绝对没有什么可以驱使您达到理智的边缘，以至于您怀疑是否应该在这里。 如果您正在阅读本文，那么您将过着特权生活。 一个带有互联网连接的电话，一部电话，一台笔记本电脑，可能会on饮您自己制作的高价咖啡。 没有什么可以带你到一个没有其他出路的地方。

I am a person who lives in the extremes. An all or nothing existence. And this wasn’t great for my self worth when it was entirely attached to the success of my open source project and business.

我是一个极端的人。 一个全有或全无的存在。 当它完全与我的开源项目和业务的成功息息相关时，这对我的自我价值并不合适。

Checking out, for me, was really about redefining what success meant. And when I got to that place, it wasn’t about taking a holiday, it was about figuring out what was going to make me happy in life. That wasn’t working on open source, that wasn’t even about how much I was earning. It was more about why I was on this earth. Now that’s a very personal thing and one I won’t go into it here, it’s not the place or time, but what I’ll say is, we’re all human, we all have needs, and that need isn’t to write code or build a business.

对于我来说，签出真的是关于重新定义成功的含义。 当我到达那个地方时，不是要去度假，而是要弄清楚什么会使我的生活变得快乐。 那不是在开源上工作，甚至连我赚多少钱都没有。 更多的是关于我为什么在这个地球上。 现在这是一件非常个人的事情，我不会在这里讨论，这不是地点或时间，但我要说的是，我们都是人，我们都有需求，而需求不是编写代码或建立业务。

是时候退出了 (Time to call it quits)

What does it take to build open source for 5 years and survive? To know when it’s time to quit. Yea that’s right. “But wait, I thought this story was going to have a happy ending”. Well it does, sort of, or well it hasn’t reached it’s conclusion yet but at a certain point, as a maintainer you have to know when its time to close that chapter in your life.

构建开源5年并生存需要什么？ 知道什么时候该退出了。 是的，没错。 “但是等等，我认为这个故事将会有一个圆满的结局”。 好吧，它确实做到了，或者还没有达到结论，但是在某个时候，作为维护者，您必须知道何时该结束您生命中的那一章。

I am not the first to talk about quitting open source. Many more people have painted the horrible realities of it from their perspective, whether it be sexism, harassment, racism or all of the above. But when it’s time, it’s time.

我不是第一个谈论退出开源的人。 无论是性别歧视，骚扰，种族主义还是以上所有因素，都有更多人从他们的角度描绘了恐怖的现实。 但是，当时间到了。

At the start of 2019, I gave myself one more year. I said, if nothing changes by the end of this year, that’s 5 years and I’m done. 5 years is a good enough time to be doing this, and at the end of it, I built something cool that many people came to use but I have to move on with my life.

在2019年初，我又给自己一年了。 我说，如果到今年年底什么都没有改变，那就是5年了，我已经完成了。 5年是执行此操作的足够时间，最后，我建立了一些很酷的东西，许多人开始使用它，但我必须继续前进。

So I was ready, I was at peace with my decision. And then as if by magic a big pile of money fell in my lap. So I did what any rationale person does, I kept going.

所以我准备好了，我对自己的决定感到安心。 然后好像是一大笔钱倒在了我的腿上。 所以我做了任何理智的人都做的事，我一直走下去。

您如何真正讲故事？ (How do you really live to tell the story?)

You get VC funded of course. After 4 years of ups and downs, no money, barely any more and then on the verge of insanity, I got funded. Ladies and gentlemen, let me start by saying this is not the goal of every open source maintainer, in fact most just want to write code full time on their terms, but for me, the goal was always to build a product, business and company.

您当然会获得风险投资。 经过四年的风风雨雨，没有钱，几乎没有钱，然后在精神错乱的边缘，我得到了资助。 女士们，先生们，我首先要说的是，这并不是每个开源维护者的目标，实际上，大多数人只是想全职以他们的名义编写代码，但对我而言，目标始终是建立产品，业务和公司。

Getting my opportunity to move beyond building an open source project, meant flying across the world to the mecca of startups, you know that place, I won’t name it. It meant tapping into the thing that drives the majority of this industry, greed and FOMO. And it meant putting everything on the line e.g the money I had saved to pay myself, to make it happen.

获得我的机会超越了构建开源项目的范围，这意味着要飞遍世界各地，进入初创公司的圣地，你知道那个地方，我不会命名。 这意味着要利用驱动这个行业的大多数人，贪婪和FOMO。 这意味着一切都准备就绪，例如我积saved下来的钱来付钱给自己，以实现这一目标。

Open source is a horribly thankless game when you decide to take on the task as a full time maintainer and if that’s your goal, then you should know exactly what you’re getting yourself into. And in fact, I commend you. To all my brothers and sisters maintaining open source software for the sheer joy it brings you. I salute you. But to everyone else with the hopes and dreams of turning that into a business, I say. Heed these words. Stop, turn around, go take that cushy job at Apple or Google. Save yourself years of pain. Live a better life. Because trust me, these are not the droids you’re looking for.

当您决定以全职维护者的身份来执行任务时，开源是一种令人费解的可怕游戏，如果这是您的目标，那么您应该确切地知道自己正在从事什么。 实际上，我赞扬您。 我所有维护开源软件的兄弟姐妹都为它带来的喜悦。 我向你们致敬。 我说，但对于其他所有人，他们都有希望和梦想将其转变为业务。 注意这些话。 停下来，转身，去苹果或谷歌那份轻松的工作。 为自己节省多年的痛苦。 过上更好的生活。 因为相信我，所以这些不是您要寻找的机器人。

I got funded and spent the last year building a product (m3o.com), which I am aggressively promoting as the AWS giant killer, the Kubernetes dream destroyer, and the future of all cloud software development.

去年，我获得了资金并花了钱开发了一个产品( m3o.com )，作为AWS的巨型杀手，Kubernetes梦想驱逐舰以及所有云软件开发的未来，我正在积极地推广该产品。

So that’s how you survive, you get funded. No not really, but truthfully surviving as an open source maintainer is a willingness to reset your expectations about what that means. To accept that no one is going to pay you for your efforts, that people are going to expect more than they give back and that you can’t rely on anyone but yourself to carry that thing forward as a success.

这样便可以生存，获得资金。 并非完全如此，但作为一名开源维护者，如实地生存下来，就是愿意重新设定您对这意味着什么的期望。 要接受没有人会为您的努力付出代价，人们会期望得到的回报超过他们的回报，并且您不能依靠任何人(只有您自己)才能成功地推进这一事业。

You might envy docker, kubernetes and all these other world class projects that are thriving, but peek behind the curtain and realise that vendors are driving much of the maintainership there, the likes of Amazon, Micro…well not Amazon but Microsoft, Google, etc are heavily investing in open source. And VCs are throwing money at it because they think some kind of monetization is possible off the back of a wildly successful project while everyone else is just along for the ride.

您可能会羡慕docker，kubernetes和所有其他蓬勃发展的世界级项目，但在幕后窥视一下，并意识到供应商正在推动那里的大部分维护工作，例如Amazon，Micro…不是Amazon，而是Microsoft，Google等正在大力投资开源。 风险投资人为此付出了很多钱，因为他们认为，在一个非常成功的项目的背后，某种货币化是可能的，而其他所有人都在努力。

You will not create the next Docker, and you shouldn’t want to either, because that business failed horrifically. You might end up with a nice project with a few thousand GitHub stars, a nice little slack community and some contributors but beyond that, you should see it as a hobby.

您不会创建下一个Docker，也不要创建任何一个，因为该业务惨遭失败。 您可能最终会获得一个不错的项目，该项目包含数千个GitHub星，一个不错的小懈怠社区和一些贡献者，但除此之外，您应该将它视为一种爱好。

If you want to build open source software and live to tell the story like I did, the best thing you can do, is not even start. Truth be told, the journey is long and hard, with very little reward at the end of it. You may think I’m exaggerating but reach out to any full-time open source maintainer and ask the questions; how do you make money, how much do you earn and how do you feel? I will guarantee the answer is not the one you want to hear.

如果您想构建开源软件并像我一样讲故事，那么最好的事情就是不要开始。 实话实说，旅途漫长而艰辛，最终却收获很少。 您可能以为我很夸张，但是可以联系任何专职的开源维护者并提出问题。 你怎么赚钱，你赚多少，你感觉如何？ 我将保证答案不是您想听到的。

I am Asim Aslam. This is my story of building open source full-time and living to tell the story. I hope you enjoyed it, or at the very least learned something.

我是Asim Aslam。 这是我关于全职构建开源生活并讲述故事的故事。 我希望您喜欢它，或者至少学到了一些东西。