I had this idea recently: if people are willing to pay a small fee monthly for streaming services or Photoshop, surely some would also be willing to pay a similar amount for the FOSS they use. Even a few cents monthly would add up to quite a substantial sum over a vast userbase*. In light of this, I’ve started working on an app that records your app usage, and then at the end of the month splits whatever sum of money you want to donate amongst the apps in proportion to the time you spent using them.
Then it will (hopefully) let you donate to all of those projects with a single click.
Since it’s only halfway finished, I’m posting this to gague how much interest there would be in such an app. Could you could see yourself using something like this? Do you have any ideas for what I should add/change?
*(It also occurred to me that perhaps one way to fix surveillance capitalism on the internet would be if every HTTP get request came with a microtransaction (eg 0.01¢) attached; those without money would gain those 0.01¢ by seeing ads, like today)
Hmm good point, it’s true that a human would probably be better at getting the most for FOSS out of your money than a dumb algorithm. Just like is the case for stock brokers
Honestly if you are interested in working on this domain. something like “amazon for red hats” sounds like a better idea. where you are able to subscribe to a organisation and he can gather feedback on what work people want the most (features and bug fixes). but only people paying money are allowed to vote. with data on which organisation are growing in their revenue and number of subscribers which is another indicator (like liberapay view income history section). and of course ability to write reviews and give ratings but again only for paying customers so there will be no review bombing.