<story><title>Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)</title><url>http://blog.smartbear.com/software-quality/bid/167059/Fabrice-Bellard-Portrait-of-a-Superproductive-Programmer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yorak</author><text>The question from previous discussion remains unanswered. How does he finance his production of top notch open source software? At least for me, the day to day churn of my day job leaves me too mentally exhausted to chase the crazy ideas I get from time to time, let alone finish them.&lt;p&gt;Imagine a world where hackers, artists and artisans could follow their passions and could chase crazy ideas without a risk of losing the roof on top of their heads and butter over their bread. How many Bellards, we as a humanity, would have running around flinging great code, solving great problems and giving away the fruits of their hard work?&lt;p&gt;I think we could afford it if we really wanted. If the world just accepted that because of automation fewer and fewer people are needed to work in production (food, items etc.) a huge untapped innovative potential is waiting to be unleashed. In playing Civilization this would be easy, just a click and your society has changed the emphasis of it&apos;s production to sciences and art. But how to do this in real life?&lt;p&gt;I guess I just have to wait and see if the government of Finland gets around and issues citizen’s income as propagated by the Green party. That would be a start and the  consequences would be really interesting to see.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>davedx</author><text>It&apos;s one of the main reasons I decided to become a freelancer. I&apos;ve been at it for a few months and I can now pull in 5-6k euros for a month long project. This leaves me the option to either work the whole year if I can keep things pipelined and come out with a really nice income, or spend decent chunks of time on my own projects. I&apos;m currently still figuring out the balance between those two. Just had a week off between projects, for example.&lt;p&gt;The only thing is, I actually work harder on my freelance projects and have less &quot;idle time&quot; than in permanent positions, so I am a bit more tired during projects.</text></comment>
<story><title>Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)</title><url>http://blog.smartbear.com/software-quality/bid/167059/Fabrice-Bellard-Portrait-of-a-Superproductive-Programmer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yorak</author><text>The question from previous discussion remains unanswered. How does he finance his production of top notch open source software? At least for me, the day to day churn of my day job leaves me too mentally exhausted to chase the crazy ideas I get from time to time, let alone finish them.&lt;p&gt;Imagine a world where hackers, artists and artisans could follow their passions and could chase crazy ideas without a risk of losing the roof on top of their heads and butter over their bread. How many Bellards, we as a humanity, would have running around flinging great code, solving great problems and giving away the fruits of their hard work?&lt;p&gt;I think we could afford it if we really wanted. If the world just accepted that because of automation fewer and fewer people are needed to work in production (food, items etc.) a huge untapped innovative potential is waiting to be unleashed. In playing Civilization this would be easy, just a click and your society has changed the emphasis of it&apos;s production to sciences and art. But how to do this in real life?&lt;p&gt;I guess I just have to wait and see if the government of Finland gets around and issues citizen’s income as propagated by the Green party. That would be a start and the  consequences would be really interesting to see.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fijal</author><text>I&apos;m essentially doing it. It&apos;s hard. You have to quit your job and organize income. For me it&apos;s a combination of open source donations and consulting with living in a relatively low income (and low cost) country, so consulting can pay for a lot more, if you do it on a global scale.</text></comment>