The developer's guide to making money in the open-source galaxy by Ronald Dehuysser

Ronald Dehuysser shares his personal journey building JobRunner, an open-source Java background job processing library, from its creation in 2020 through nearly $1M in annual revenue by 2025. He covers the full arc: quitting freelancing during COVID, getting first paying customers, navigating co-founder drama, a near-burnout, critical production bugs affecting cancer patients, pricing strategy evolution, procurement negotiations, and eventually hiring a team. Key lessons include the value of open-source as a marketing channel, the importance of a 'talk to sales' button, using buy-vs-build calculators to justify pricing, and donating 5% of revenue to environmental causes.