Open Source Projects And The Value of a Community
This post is for those who are interested in why there is little new content here and why I can no longer help or advise everyone individually.
We will also talk through how the DIY Smart Home can become a real community project.
I thought for a long time whether I should say something about my personal situation …
Since I still mostly work alone for the ei23 project and the project is very dependent on me personally, I would like to explain and also justify why not so much is happening here at the moment.
Above all, I want to make one thing clear, this project is not dead. I use every free minute to work on it. There is still a lot to come.
I would like to thank everyone who supported this project in any way, be it through donations, Patreon membership, using affiliate links, watching YouTube advertising or in any other way. I got so much positive feedback for that, thank you very much
My personal situation a bit nerve-wracking.
The problem with small, unknown open source projects that are donation-based or supposedly “free”: They are chronically underfunded, but that is not something I was not aware of beforehand. That’s why I’m not at all surprised that my hourly wage at ei23 is somewhere in the cent range.
I always had a long-term horizon in mind here and had therefore initially financed my projects internally.
The real enablers were these guys.
These are my photo boxes or video machines, self-made.
Before Covid-19, I had the privilege of a fairly passive income thanks to a relatively highly automated system, which gave me a relatively large amount of time for various projects.
As we all know, things changed a bit at the beginning of last year, so I went to a good € 10,000 in 2020.
And my girlfriend, who is or was primarily a wedding photographer, has to step back just as much,
The state Covid-19 aid in Germany works for us about as well as a Raspberry Pi in a switched on microwave.
Because of Covid-19 I don’t have more time, as some apparently think, unfortunately I have less time for ei23, because mainly time has to be exchanged for money at short notice.
If you don’t understand that, then I can’t help you.
And then I don’t really want to help you at all.
Even if funding is important: A community is just as valuable as long as it actively contributes, and I have already received a few emails and comments with the request to contribute to the project and that should of course be easily possible.
The installation script itself is only a small part of the project and, for example, a GitHub repository is not sufficient here, as the project consists of so many different components.
I think a forum, wiki reference book or chat server makes more sense.
Here I would of course welcome something that requires little maintenance. I don’t want to limit myself to YouTube comments or Facebook groups.
But for now, write in the comments which form of exchange and knowledge gathering you think is useful
By the way, I’m working on two new videos for two projects and even if things are not progressing that fast at the moment, something really exciting should happen again soon!
Thank you for your attention!
See you soon!
– Felix