Abubakar Nur Khalil: We’re quite fortunate in the time we’re in right now. If we’re having this conversation 5, maybe even 10 years ago, it would’ve been a huge, huge difference when it comes to the opportunities to have, especially for open source developers. A lot of them still do the work they do pro bono, but we’re seeing a lot more projects, even exchanges, get into the fora with regard to funding developers, which is incredible. nostr:npub1spralxq6jlw5rdy0249vqr5sh43rfrlx2wzv3rhjjqedw559w9psrs8s72 is also doing a lot of that—Brink, for example. So we’re seeing a lot of opportunities for developers that are trying to get into open source, which is at the heart of this entire ecosystem. A lot of the critical code that runs or powers the ecosystem is really open source, all the way from Bitcoin Core all the way to some of these other projects like LND as well. So it makes a lot of sense for them to go that route. And we’re at a point, like I said, where there are a lot of avenues for individuals to get funding, whether it’s short-term funding or even year-on grants, which organizations like Brink do. And the Human Rights Foundation, too, has done quite a lot in this regard as well, so that’s the route of going open source as well. Another thing is, developers have the opportunity to actually work in #Bitcoin companies. So this is analogous to what you would normally have with regards to regular tech companies where you just work there, get a salary, all that kind of stuff. Another model—which we’ll see whether it’s adopted or not, which is something that companies can be looking at, especially #Bitcoin companies—is when they hire these developers, they could give them some time out of the week to actually be working on some of these open source products. Again, like I said, a lot of it is open source and it makes a lot of sense for you to be throwing your great developers to actually work on some of these upstream projects like Bitcoin Core to ensure that the project is stable, all those tools and services you’re building on top of it are benefiting from this robustness and this resiliently built project. So allowing them not only to have jobs as conventional jobs in different companies or going the grant route—you could mix the two by giving back to the open source community while still having these developers get hired. So there are a couple of other gigs you could run from the freelance perspective for developers. So these are individuals that don’t necessarily want to have a job nor do they want to commit to a grant. So there are a lot of bug bounties, there are a lot of bounties in the space, which, like I said, this is just for those who don’t really want that commitment for either a 9-to-5 or grants. So there’s also that opportunity: a lot of grants, even in Bitcoin Core or a lot of other open source products where individuals come in, request a change, and then they put a bug bounty or they put a bounty against that for anyone who wants to make it. So yeah, those are some of the opportunities that come to mind. Another one obviously is mentorship roles as well. With more and more of these projects coming and onboarding individuals, you could actually come on board as a mentor as well if you’ve been an open source contributor for quite a while. So you can come on as a mentor and get paid to actually do that mentorship also. These are some of the quick examples I could think of with regards to opportunities for developers.
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