[RossBencina]

As an independent maintainer I don't really know where to start trying to organise an ongoing income stream from users to support maintenance.

I thought that the idea of a funding manifest to advertise funding requests was a good idea: https://floss.fund/funding-manifest/ No idea if it works.

[bluGill]

Most open source projects don't really need an income stream. It only becomes an issue when the project is large enough that there is desire for someone to work on it half time or more. Smaller projects can still be done as a hobbyist thing. (the project I "maintain" only needs a few hours of my time per year, but since I no longer use it I can't be bothered - there is a problem for those who still use it). Of course it is hard to say - curl seems like it should be a small project but in fact it is large enough to support someone full time.