Boone Gorges: Free Software, Free Labor, and the Freelancer: The Economics of Contributing

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Published

November 6, 2014

In this presentation, I’ll address both the *why* and the *how* of contributing while freelancing. I’ll lay out both an economic and a philosophical argument for why freelancers ought to budget for time on the parent projects. And I’ll talk about some concrete strategies for making the process less painful than it might seem at first glance. I’ll use myself as a case study, and talk about how my yearly earnings have steadily increased at the same time that the proportion of my working week spent on client work has actually gone *down*, to the extent that I spend over 50% of my time on free software work that I’m not paid for directly.

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Event

WordCamp NYC 2014 58

Speakers

Boone Gorges 16

Tags

Contributing 114
Core Contributions 26
volunteer 15

Language

English 10531

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