[alkonaut]

Put them on github. The benefit for you in this equation is having your name on some code that a prospective employer can see. That will have a lot more monetary value to you, than you would ever be likely to make from selling the software (which is very little).

[iforgotpassword]

While I don't know the scope and possible impact of the projects, I'd tend to agree. Maybe wait a bit before making up your mind, see how much time and energy you actually still have when working a full time job. Letting your side projects rot to death sounds like the saddest choice, if you cant find a way to monetize them on the side.

If it helps you rationalize the choice to open source, or "give away for free" as you put it, maybe go through the list of open source software you daily drive, or that has repeatedly helped you out, and consider this "giving back". I did this a few years ago with a dozen mostly unfinished, smaller projects. Nothing blew up. The most successful one has 8 stars. Zero comments or issues. Still, maybe someone found some part of it useful, copied a class or two, something along these lines. I know that it has happened to me before that some weirdo on GitHub somewhere solved a problem I had and I just sneakily copied a couple functions and bent them into shape for whatever I was doing at the time.