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> That's because there's currently no way to make a donation to the abstract concept of "open source software"

This isn't absolutely true, there are the FSF and the Software Freedom Conservancy, who fund many medium-ish projects, including ones that include some small utilities.

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Fair enough.

Though the ability to curate your personal pool is an important piece of the puzzle.

Right, there's not a perfect way to make a donation to open source software, and this proposal seems absolutely worth trying as a way to make it more easy to contribute to more projects that are more valuable to you.

And also fund a lot of evangelists that don't code at all but spend their time playing open source cops on mailing lists, forums and tech conventions.

(IOW, their idea of supporting the abstract idea of open source software. Although I'm not sure who you're talking about: Stallman I guess fits the description now but wrote his fair share of code in his day.)

Both the FSF and Conservancy do pay people to code and do other technical work.

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