The archive · Small Business & Money · Financial decision · 2022–2024
Josh Goldberg's 2024 income report: $60,191 total, $46,561 from open source
An independent open source maintainer publishes itemized yearly income reports, growing open source earnings ~24% to $46,561.
Josh Goldberg
What it had to solve
After a decade as a staff developer earning over $200,000 base salary, Josh Goldberg went full-time on open source in 2022 with no employer paycheck — only community sponsorships and side projects.
How it works
In 2022, after a decade as a staff developer earning more than $200,000 in base salary, Josh Goldberg left industry to work full-time as an independent open source maintainer — no employer, no paycheck. His income would come from community sponsorships, project funds and side projects, and he decided to run it like a one-person business with public books.
Each January he publishes an itemized 'Finances In Review': income by source and by month, with footnotes for every anomaly. The 2024 report shows $60,191 total income, of which $46,561 (~77%) came from open source — typescript-eslint $22,772, Mocha $8,588, Learning TypeScript royalties $7,368, GitHub Sponsors $6,230, ESLint $5,487, consulting $4,262, Tidelift $2,587, podcasts $2,000 and thanks.dev $897.
The model is deliberately diversified: no single fluctuating project makes up a supermajority of income. Open source earnings grew ~24% from 2023's $38,000, and his year-by-year milestones — NYC minimum wage in 2022, living wage in 2023 — became quoted data in debates about open-source sustainability. He is transparent that $60K is still not a great US-city developer salary, and keeps publishing the numbers anyway.
Why it lands
- Publishing exact income figures makes sponsorships feel like an investment in a person, not an anonymous donation.
- Diversifying across Open Collective, GitHub Sponsors, Tidelift and thanks.dev means no single project's decline can sink the income.
- The annual report doubles as accountability: donors can see exactly where their money went.
- Open-source sustainability was a live industry debate, and his numbers gave the argument a concrete, citable example.
What it did
Open source income grew ~24% from 2023's $38,000 to $46,561 in 2024, 77% of a $60,191 total; his yearly milestones became widely cited evidence in the open-source sustainability debate.
What you can take
Radical financial transparency plus diversified small revenue streams lets independent builders earn directly from users — the income report itself is the pitch.
Since then
Goldberg continued the annual practice into 2025 and beyond, treating each report as both accountability to sponsors and a call for more funding. The 2024 report noted he stopped consulting after May, that book royalties had passed their peak, and that typescript-eslint stipends were cut ~60%, leaving $60K 'not long-term sustainable' — so he published plans to grow it. His reports remain a reference point for how individual maintainers can earn a living outside a company payroll.
Sources
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