How does one find out more about this scene, and more importantly does it actually provide you with enough income to live on? (Rent is expensive in cities)
There's not exactly a centralized directory of cool tech coops, but there's a few places that list some or where they hang out. [1] There's also a fair bunch of coop orientation in the XMPP/ActivityPub ecosystems.
Some projects are driven by direct donations, some others via grants (all NLNet-supported projects) and business partnerships (Blender foundation), some provide paid services to fund R&D (SourceHut).
Overall, it's technically possible to derive a decent income from such schemes, but that's not exactly widespread. Many dedicated hackers will work for minimum wage or less, but some will arrange either:
- to reduce their expenses, by moving to cheaper places [2] or living in shared flats or communities; if you're organized as a collective even food and furniture can have close-to-zero cost [3]
- or to have a high-wage part-time job on the side, or support contracts to pay the bills; if you get half-time to work on your pet projects, that's already quite an achievement
Overall, building a cooperative economy asks the question of where does the money go? The more autonomy we can achieve, and the more money we can "recycle" into other cooperatives, the less of our resources leak into the pockets of the 1%.
So yes, if you make a really cool project people appreciate and/or can depend on for their business, you can sure make a living out of it: just be sure to use copyleft licenses (eg. aGPLv3) so you're not scammed out of your work by big businesses. But personally, i'm more interested in non-profits driving R&D with a vision (like Framasoft does with the Degooglize Internet campaign and eg. Peertube/Mobilizon project).
[1] for example libreho.st, chatons.org (french-speaking) for hosting coops
[2] for example in France, if you don't insist on living in the big cities, you can find places to rent for close to free once you subtract housing support from the rent ; i guess the same is true in many places
[3] skipping unsold food from (super)markets or growing food in the backyard; we could also mention utility hacking for free electricity/water but i can't say most devs i know do that
