When you develop open source software, you usually expect two things:
What you almost never expect is receiving a donation from a real company for something you’re building.
And that’s exactly what happened to me a few days ago while working around Dolibarr ERP CRM.
It wasn’t thousands of euros. It was 15 dollars.
But honestly, the money is the least important part.
What matters is that a company decided to pull out its card and support the development.
And that completely changes how you perceive any open source project.
The business world runs on open source.
WordPress, Laravel, Linux, MariaDB and PHP power a large part of the internet thanks to projects maintained by people who are often working for free.
I’ve been working for years with WordPress and Laravel, building custom solutions, automations and business connectors.
A big part of my current developments comes directly from real client needs.
And that’s exactly where I understood something important:
companies do pay when software solves a real problem for them.
Dolibarr ERP CRM has something I really like: it is real business software.
It’s not an experimental project for developers stuck debating tabs vs spaces.
We are talking about an ERP/CRM used by real companies for:
And that’s where open source becomes especially powerful.
Because a company can adapt the system, build modules, automate processes, integrate APIs and evolve the software according to its needs.
Exactly the kind of development we constantly do at CH Consulting.
Here’s the interesting part.
15 dollars won’t change your life.
But a company saying:
“what you are building provides us value”
does change things.
Because it means:
Publishing code, building modules or contributing to business projects is not just about “the community”.
It also helps you position yourself professionally.
For example, a big part of my experience building tools on WordPress eventually led to creating my own projects such as Antonella Framework.
When you share real-world development work, several things happen:
No, I didn’t get rich from 15 dollars.
But I did confirm something important:
the work I’m doing creates real value.
And in the open source world, that already means a lot.
Because the real problem was never charging money.
The real problem was always building something worth supporting.
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