[rndhouse]

> 2. the maintainers are surely not the only ones contributing; how to pay all the rest?

This is certainly a problem that I would like to address. It's important to reward/fund contributors as much as maintainers.

Donation schemes defined in code are as modifiable as any other code in the software. I would like to build a bot which will open a pull request on behalf of contributors and propose a share of donations.

[diogenesjunior]

it is much harder though.

i contribute weekly to one project, but i am not a maintainer. i could reason that my contributions to this project are worth money. being paid every month would be reasonable.

in another project, i only contribute when i run into a bug or need something added. this happens maybe 3-4 times a year. i could reason that these bug fixes and feature additions are worth money, but i would be out of line to say that a monthly amount of money is reasonable. do one time donations or 1-2x a year donations make sense?

i also have various projects where i've contributed 1-10 lines of code once and never come back. i don't deserve to be paid for those, in my opinion.

[rndhouse]

There is so much variety in how people contribute and what they hope to get out of it in a perfect world!

My goal is to put the mechanisms in place. And give people another means of self expression.

[WJW]

Should you continue to be paid for software as long as it provides value, even if you no longer work on it? That is a question that will spark ideological debates for centuries.