Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still, high profile projects should be able to raise this type of money with ease. If they would say “Would match our ‘donation’ and donate $10 each year that we put in $1k in labor to this project?” that sounds like some commercial users would accept. But the first problem with medium scale OSS like this is that it’s no one’s hobby to manage projects or beg for money. It’s also a problem that OSS contribution/sponso…
> I could much easier get permission to buy a $5k piece of software than donate $5 to an OSS project that powers out largest project and has been maintained for 10 years by a single person. Because business has it's own logic. If you invest $5k in a product, you are expecting the return to be customer support, quality control, timely bug fixing, "enterprise" features, feature request priority, legal indemnification /…
In the end the easiest option for me is to donate a $25 personally on my employers behalf and be done with it.