Are you ready to participate in projects for free?

Question

PHP

Some lyrics:

I am developing Internet projects. I have an additional source of income and have free time. There are people who have interesting ideas, but there is no way to implement them. We implement them. For free. If there are expenses, they come from our pocket. My colleague and I do not want to introduce communism or utopia. We really look at things. We just have the opportunity and we give it to those who do not have it.

And now the actual question:

Are you ready to participate in projects for free and spend your free time solving an interesting problem (for yourself) and helping others?

Answer 1

And what is the purpose? Kill free time and money?
You can help, of course. But only if you understand why you are doing it. There are different situations.
Therefore, there are 2 answers:
1) “Are you ready to participate in projects for free” - generally not for free. For buns in the future - yes.
2) “Spending your free time on solving an interesting problem” - yes. The life of a developer is 30% of such decisions. This is self-development, without which there is nothing to do in this area.

Answer 2

See what projects. If it will be a contribution to the technological development of the community and will benefit my resume - yes, I'm ready. For example, database bindings (in new languages ​​or new databases), development of unit testing frameworks, and the like.
And if an online store or a new social network with a "cool" feature - only for money :)

Answer 3

I would not. As a rule, people who are looking for those who will participate for free or for a share offer absolutely miserable ideas, for example, copy some existing game or site, just look at the same freelansim.
If the idea is good, then you can profit from it. If the idea is not profitable, it is most likely bad, for example, the product is not in demand in the market.
If a developer wants to solve interesting problems, he would be better off looking for a company that has such problems, rather than inventing another crooked bicycle.

Answer 4

Well, I guess the development process itself attracts me. And besides, I'm not looking for profit, just a desire to help.

Answer 5

Are you doing this completely free of charge?
It would be logical to have a share in the project that you create yourself (and even more so if you incur costs).

Answer 6

Something is not right here.
There must be some secondary benefit, as they say in psychologists.
Is it just that a person from the outside undertakes to do a project for free to another person, just because he knows how and has free time?
For example, I never had a desire to clean in a neighbor's house, although I know how to clean and I have free time, I'd rather go to the museum, take a walk, or work on some of my projects.
If you really do not have any benefit (for example, a percentage of future income) from the project, then most likely it is beneficial that you can replenish your portfolio and gain experience with this project.
But I wouldn't do that. If there is potential and resources - the desire to gain experience and free time, I would start implementing my own ideas instead of someone else's.
But if you really work for free and you don't mind your time, let's work together on one of my ideas :)

Answer 7

OFF-TOP: can you advise on the project? I have been writing T.Z. for a long time. for service, and there is no one to consult with

Answer 8

Everyone wants to eat. I think smart students who need to build a portfolio, experience, etc. would help you. However, their material problems are even more acute, so they are more willing to agree to a less interesting, but at least somehow paid job ... It's
another matter to work for yourself and on your project. But that doesn't seem to be your case.
PS: I was also often scolded at the university for altruism ... But it came to me somewhere in the 2nd year of work ... This is a thankless task, it seems to me ...

Answer 9

I'm talking about the development of interesting projects. For me, it is a solution to an interesting problem; for them, it is a benefit in the form of the result obtained. Well, for me - another good deed for my neighbor

Answer 10

The answer to this general question is no.
but then I remembered that I did a lot of what I did for free and open source and not very exactly for the same reason - there was time and it was interesting, but money either didn’t interest me in such a volume, or I saw that people had problems with them, but it’s still interesting :)

Answer 11

I'm not exactly a developer, but if there was an interesting project, for example, web automation on selenium webdriver + Python (so far the only automation tool that I know), I would gladly devote some free time to it. Not for free, of course, but not for material benefits either. I am primarily interested in replenishing my resume, experience and recommendations, and this is what I consider the main "goodies" from such projects.

Answer 12

I can help with administration if there are interesting tasks for fault tolerance / stability and so on.

Answer 13

There is no definition or criteria for an interesting project…

Answer 14

With our level of piracy (I know from my own experience), even when you make good software at a penny price (and which, in principle, sells well, but ...), it's more like free altruism. It takes an order of magnitude more time to develop than you get income, I analyzed it, you get only 10%, the rest (90%) goes to warez and clubbing.
By the way, I also have a question: it’s understandable with wareses, people there download, look, if they like the software in 80% of cases they buy it. But how to deal with clubbing (where more than 80% of investments go)? It's just some kind of scourge for developers.
How?

Answer 15

For more than two years I have been working on my TorrentMonitor project (I also somehow dared to write a note on Habr :)), I did it initially for myself, then I just shared it with people. I had to invest my own money by paying the designer and layout designer, I wrote the rest myself, after the post on Habré, several people appeared on the github who wanted to help the project, but things didn’t go beyond a dozen lines, as a result, I continue to work alone. I like to do something interesting and useful in my free time, this is of course a weak plus for me in my resume because I am not a programmer by profession, but I think this is another indicator of my interest even in a non-profit business, organization and desire to solve problems. Although I think that it adds something interesting to just experience and communication.