> Wow, paying himself $150k after tax from donations! That's wildly more successful than I would have guessed. (Not saying it's undeserved.)

There's an article somewhere on the rationale of Andrew's salary. From the top of my head it was based on an median lead developer salary in the area.

Honestly that seems fair, obviously less than he would have in the private sector, but still high enough to not burn out and have a comfortable life.

> Wow, paying himself $150k after tax from donations! That's wildly more successful than I would have guessed.

Why? The salary Andrew Kelley would likely attract at a corporate is much higher than that. If you want sustainable open-source infrastructure then someone, somewhere will have to pay for it. It feels crummy to attempt to pressure people into taking super low salaries (and probably results in higher rates of burnout).

> Damn... really? More than $170k/year from Github Sponsors? That's got to be the most successful Github Sponsor income ever right?

Building programming languages is hard? Rust had something like ~10 Mozilla developers working on it for ~10 years (that's something upwards of $20-30mn in investment).

> Why?

Because most open source projects don't attract anywhere near those levels of donations. The salary he could get in a private company has no effect on that.

> Rust had something like ~10 Mozilla developers working on it for ~10 years (that's something upwards of $20-30mn in investment).

Fair point.

> Because most open source projects don't attract anywhere near those levels of donations.

Big ones do! For example, Python/JavaScript/Linux. Some are developed by companies (e.g. Go/Java/Kotlin). Seems perfectly sensible that companies using Zig would donate to the language...

> Because most open source projects don't attract anywhere near those levels of donations.

It's not unheard of. Eg, Blender earns $261,360/month. (https://fund.blender.org/) Companies should more eagerly support open source projects they rely on with funding. It keeps their dependencies competitive with much more expensive commercial products, and a broad base of donations prevents a project from being dominated by specific large corporate interests which might run counter to their average user.

What's even more wild, was reading the complaints and condemnation of competing language creators for having supporters give them donations. It's a much different tune, when one's own pocket is fat with donation money. Wish people could be happy for the success of others and not only themselves.

Baseless accusation. Do you by chance have affiliation with a "competing language"?

checks profile

there it is

> "competing language"

Just a consumer. Hope that it is ok to choose or like something else. Please don't be angry. If it counts for anything, fine with things going well for you.

> "Baseless accusation"

No sir, not baseless. At one time, the pocket watching of competitors was real and they getting just $927/month (figure from your .me site and many other places) from their happy fans and loyal supporters seemed too much to bear.

Now that one's personal pocket is fat with $12,500/month, perhaps we can hope to see good will and grace extended to others besides one's self. The world is big enough for creators to be professionally respectful of each other and to allow consumers to choose what they like.

Can we have the source ?

Reading this, it feels like putting my hand in acid :)

I’m sure there are many people that would happily donate more so he can make more for his work. Which I had the budget to donate atm

Keep in mind that payroll taxes aren't going to him, he may only be paying himself something like 120k which is a fraction of what he'd making working for $BigCorp