[coldtea]

Who said people want to do "foundational work"?

The just want to write some specific software they enjoy writing together.

The question rather is: after said software has been proven valuable and widely used by companies, and when there remain some hard and/or non-enjoyable parts to be done to complete it/enhance it (specific drivers, documentation, advanced features, etc), why don't any of the users donate some money to help?

[Radim]

That's an easy one -- because they don't have to :-)

In some cases, "paying extra" without being asked to might even be compromising your fiduciary duties.

I feel the open source movement has spoilt its "user base" a little. There's very little expectation of reciprocity. Sometimes even outright hostility toward OSS modes that try work with reciprocity (check out the linked HN thread above).

This mindset might be hard to reverse at this point. As with all "communal sharing" experiments, the true crunch time comes as the economic reality sets in.

[dagw]

Donating company money is really hard, especially if you're just some manager of some department, and double so if it's not to a registered charity. Much easier to actually buy something like a support contract or a license where you get a purchase order and a receipt from a registered organization. People at companies simply cannot just give company money to random people with paypal accounts even if they think it's the right thing do to.

[coldtea]

>Donating company money is really hard, especially if you're just some manager of some department, and double so if it's not to a registered charity.

Maybe the open source communities should register as charities then? They do charitable work after all...

[numfocusfnd]

This is the function of the fiscal sponsorship program at NumFOCUS. All fiscally sponsored projects basically come under the umbrella of NumFOCUS' nonprofit status, so that the projects can receive tax-deductible contributions, etc.