Software Development as Hobby, And Domain Names.

I don't know how to word this one, but this is aimed to current software developers.

I've got a few public open source projects, some being windows ports of linux software, although I can't discuss my real name here, my software is used by a small portion of people, roughly 5-10 per week. (not much people, but it's ok)

I'm moving to personal projects that will be completely closed source, I know it's bad, but It's mostly to for fill a need, and It's going to be shareware, I'm considering doing this to make enough money as a side job.

Anyways, I'm just trying to work out how to set lay this out in my head.

now lets say my personal site is (First Name Last Name.com), and my software development site is, Lastname.org, is this an okay way of setting this up.

Lets say you will have your file downloads as a folder, such as ftp.lastname.org, while the support forums will be forums.lastname.org, and the site itself will be a wordpress site, at last name.org, instead of a private repo I'm just going to use a local repo stored on a google drive share.

Is this okay thinking? I'm going to ditch my open source projects to focus on shareware development. I'll still release open source software ofc. My shareware will pretty much be able to install on any pc you own, no stupid licencing limits or whatever, but like many software serial numbers will get blacklisted, in the next version.

I'd be interested in hearing more about your project, from a technical standpoint. The idea of setting up a private repo of WordPress assets on Google Drive is something that I'd like to learn. I think your domain structure sounds fine. If it makes sense to the user, that's what matters most.



I'm just a [emoji514]chubby [emoji480]little [emoji1590]Trekkie [emoji1348] baby from [emoji1063] Canada.

Shybug said:

I don't know how to word this one, but this is aimed to current software developers.

I've got a few public open source projects, some being windows ports of linux software, although I can't discuss my real name here, my software is used by a small portion of people, roughly 5-10 per week. (not much people, but it's ok)

I'm moving to personal projects that will be completely closed source, I know it's bad, but It's mostly to for fill a need, and It's going to be shareware, I'm considering doing this to make enough money as a side job.

Click to expand...

As a software engineer myself, there's nothing "bad" about making closed source, except to perhaps a few open source extremists. I rarely see anyone suggesting writers or musicians shouldn't copyright their works ...

Writing open source software is great, and even more so if you get paid for it. (Some companies pay employees to work on such software.) On the other hand, if you want to make money by charging for it, nothing wrong with that.

Shybug said:

Anyways, I'm just trying to work out how to set lay this out in my head.

now lets say my personal site is (First Name Last Name.com), and my software development site is, Lastname.org, is this an okay way of setting this up.

Lets say you will have your file downloads as a folder, such as ftp.lastname.org, while the support forums will be forums.lastname.org, and the site itself will be a wordpress site, at last name.org, instead of a private repo I'm just going to use a local repo stored on a google drive share.

Is this okay thinking? I'm going to ditch my open source projects to focus on shareware development. I'll still release open source software ofc. My shareware will pretty much be able to install on any pc you own, no stupid licencing limits or whatever, but like many software serial numbers will get blacklisted, in the next version.

Click to expand...

Seems like a reasonable approach for a layout. I'd suggest looking into a git repo long-term, though, instead of uploading files onto a google drive. Gitlab offers free private repos, I think.

What types of programs are you looking at developing?

Shybug said:

I'm moving to personal projects that will be completely closed source, I know it's bad, but It's mostly to for fill a need, and It's going to be shareware, I'm considering doing this to make enough money as a side job.

Click to expand...

HogansHeroes said:

As a software engineer myself, there's nothing "bad" about making closed source, except to perhaps a few open source extremists. I rarely see anyone suggesting writers or musicians shouldn't copyright their works ...

Writing open source software is great, and even more so if you get paid for it. (Some companies pay employees to work on such software.) On the other hand, if you want to make money by charging for it, nothing wrong with that.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I have to chime in on that also. (Long-time closed-source dev here.) It's really not possible to disparage closed-source software projects in general without disparaging the software engineering profession. My nerdy teen-aged self avoided all sports and opted instead to write shitty games in BASIC on a TRS-80 with a black-and-white screen. But as much as I loved doing it, even those early programs were motivated in part by the hope that, some day, I'd be good enough to make a living at it. And the reality is that closed-source projects are the breadwinners that turn those kinds of hopes into realities. In absolute terms, sure, there are open-source jobs. In relative terms, though... nope.

Plus, you'll find that many of the most prolific contributors on open-source projects are moonlighting, and have paid gigs as devs on closed-source projects by day.

And then there's HogansHeroes' excellent point. We don't expect engineers and professionals in other disciplines to work for free or to publish the internals of their works, so why expect the software guys to do that? :shrug: It's a goofy double-standard.

TL;DR: Don't feel bad about writing some closed-source thing. You're fine.

HogansHeroes said:

As a software engineer myself, there's nothing "bad" about making closed source, except to perhaps a few open source extremists. I rarely see anyone suggesting writers or musicians shouldn't copyright their works ...

Writing open source software is great, and even more so if you get paid for it. (Some companies pay employees to work on such software.) On the other hand, if you want to make money by charging for it, nothing wrong with that.



Seems like a reasonable approach for a layout. I'd suggest looking into a git repo long-term, though, instead of uploading files onto a google drive. Gitlab offers free private repos, I think.

What types of programs are you looking at developing?

Click to expand...

I'm not sure actually, I've got a basic idea, my last projects involved encryption, drag and drop file encryption actually,

I'm thinking of something dealing with CD / DVD burning, ie, something along the lines of nero or power iso.