[delegate]

Apart from having a framework/service for funding open source projects, we need about the people who develop the dependencies used in those projects.

Project maintainers should have the ability to 'forward' part of the received donation to other projects - without which the project wouldn't have been possible.

Which contributors, which dependency and how much to share - these questions are best answered by the project maintainer(s) - they can forward zero or all the funds and make the process automatic, so when a donation is received, the system automatically redistributes it to other accounts, as configured by the maintainer.

I've worked on a design spec for such a system some time ago: https://github.com/boomhub/design

I'd gladly resume work on it if anyone else feels like this is the good way to go. Just start by creating an Issue :).

[vmorgulis]

I'm thinking of something automated.

For example, it's possible to gather some metrics of the usage of libraries from a running process (with strace, google perftools, source maps in javascript...).

It can be a process used by a real user or autotests from the project.

A software could monitor those probes and allow the user to reward the dependencies that:

- use less CPU or energy

- use less memory

- contains less bugs

- ...

[cabalamat]

If it's automated it will probably be gamed.

[vmorgulis]

Yes but as it is open source everybody will know who game what.