Intro

My pipe dream is to contribute to open source projects full time. I haven't been able to find a wage job locally, because a disability prevents me from working a 40 hour workweek outside of my home (and despite what the US government may tell you, it's fully legal to discriminate against disability, especially in cases like mine). I haven't been able to find a remote job, because gig jobs like audio transcription avoid California like the plague and "skilled" labor such as web development or software engineering tends to require a degree and/or years of past experience in a corporate setting, neither of which I have. But I love programming and I love contributing to open source. If my open source work is sponsored enough, I don't have to worry about finding some job that doesn't pay me enough, exacerbates my disabilities, and I probably don't even enjoy. I can just continue to do labor for community instead of some corporation.

What sort of work will I do?

• Contributing to open source projects: As of yet, I've only made pull requests for FreeSewing and one or two smaller NPM packages, but I enjoy programming and proofreading and like to give back to my community. I have the mind of a problem-solver, which comes in handy when a bug is found in an open source project.
• Little solo projects: I occasionally have the idea for a small NPM package or CLI or something that can be made by only one person. This is where I work on those and publish them--so far I haven't been publishing my games here, but some I definitely could.
• Maintaining open source projects: I also have plenty ideas for projects that I probably can't do by myself (or could over a long period of time, but would rather allow others to help out). These usually prioritize a community over any sort of money-making, so I would open source them on here. I don't imagine ever receiving more sponsor money than is proportional to my labor, but if I ever get a lot of assistance on a project I'll share funds with other contributors.

What will I use the money for?

• Living costs. The minimum wage where I live is $15.50 an hour, and that's nowhere near a living wage. Most funds from here would just help me survive, and let me focus on developing rather than trying to find a wage job.
• Materials. Some of the open source projects I plan to maintain or contribute to (e.g. FreeSewing) need testers as a way of contribution. I've started pattern testing for FreeSewing with scrap fabric and old clothing, but if I were to test anything larger (like pants or dresses), I don't have enough of any one type of fabric to do it without patchwork. Ideally, I'll be using some of this money to buy recycled, organic, deadstock, or otherwise minimal-environmental-impact cloth that can come in larger quantities than a yard or two. I refuse to go to Wal-Mart and spend less money on more fabric at the cost of supporting only a huge corporation that mistreats and doesn't properly pay the actual laborers while damaging the planet with cheap fabric that won't biodegrade (or last very long) and used a bunch of fossil fuels to produce. (No judgement to those who need to buy fabric at Wal-Mart, and I would in an emergency, but I don't consider pattern testing an emergency worthy of it).
• Mutual aid. As with many of my financial goals, one of the reasons I'd like to have more is so that I can give back to people who are in need. Obviously this shouldn't be the entire reason anyone sponsors me, because you could just go give directly to mutual aid, but it'd be super cool if organizations sponsor me to work on their project or something and I get to use that money to help people out.