It's also important to fund the small independent projects and maintainers, as they are often struggling with shoestring budgets and often have to abandon their projects from lack of means, or have their projects reimplemented by maintainers who are riding the Pareto principle (where more maintenance, usage, recognition, audience, money, will beget even more maintenance, usage, recognition, audience, money, leaving behind a long tail inside a bloody ocean, where whales and sharks incidentally cannibalise the smaller fish). $10/month could double the budget of a small-time independent maintainer, which help prevents small fish maintainers abandoning their projects, which help prevents the projects getting reimplemented with their resources consolidated by a $10,000/month Pareto maintainer, backed by even bigger entities. Abandoned projects aren't just at risk of Pareto takeovers, but also of transfers to malicious contributors (where a billion installs a month project, or a specifically targeted project, has its maintenance abandoned and an unbeknownst malicious actor volunteers to take over the maintenance burden - the most famous case of this was the leftpad incident).
Converging open-source into the top percentile of actors is a natural pattern, however it has the same trade offs of centralisation compared to decentralisation*, and still has the issue of whether novel indie projects should be abandoned from a lack of resources and reimplemented by a big actor or maintained by a bad actor, or whether we can fund the indie open-sourcer just enough so they can have a jetpack and escape the long-tail and become a big actor too.
- Centralisation vs decentralisation aren't competing approaches like a good guy vs bad guy, but rather are competing forces like hot vs cold; both forces are simultaneously useful. For instance, raspberry pi benefits from the Pareto principle, reduced cost, larger community, creates more reduced cost and larger community. However, any centralising solution was once an emerging decentralised solution - and over time convergence occurs - and eventually convergence into new emerging arenas again.
So imho, its best to contribute either maintenance, usage, recognition, audience, money to struggling projects. That said, even a big time maintainer, or youtube, or any economic actor is struggling when what they wish to produce is beyond their means, which is also any company that is bullish. So I guess then, its simply best to fund whatever you want to see more of, as that will push it further in the economic system, which is always pushing. "Push, push, push" as a Twilight Zone episode once said. However, take time to support not just the mainstream whales and sharks (what has amassed / what is massively popular / what is used by the masses), but also what is fellow, fringe, and meek (give an emerging trend, developer, or fellow peer, a fighting chance to achieve a good life, and perhaps even a blessing from the economic god to become mainstream next, achieving more of Maslow's hierarchy of needs for the achievement of happiness, fitness, and reproduction).
That is to say, bless all with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not just the previously blessed. Otherwise, it's just a squid game (the fire within humanity extinguished, the umbilical cord to the aether cut, bodies reduced as empty vessels which only diversity is superficial and marketed, living a manufactured existence in a childlike oblivion, a cog in the machine that is indivisible from the cogs it produces, a machine that is a controlled game of a few, the civilisational steward class, a royal class, an idol class, indistinguishable to the animal from a spiritual god).
TLDR: For projects that you want to not go away, if they have more than 100 sponsors already or are company* backed, then they are fine. If they have less than 100 sponsors, then they might go away, so need your funding. The less sponsors and less commercial backing, the more it is on life support. If you don't care about what goes away, and what stays, fund anything. It's all good, man.
- Be careful not to confuse indie organisations, i..e Open Collectives and Open Organisations, e.g. Bevry and many other GitHub orgs, with commercial corporations. Many indie devs have to found entities for tax requirements in their particular jurisdictions, or they do it as it makes organisation of resources on behalf of their contributions and contributors easier. These are quite different than your 100+ employee incorporation. Sometimes prolific indie devs will hear that the reason that they haven't been funded, was because users were under the impression that due to their prolific nature and organisation branding, it seemed they were already working at a commercially backed company, whereas in reality the indie dev just cared a lot and sacrificed a career of material riches to further the free software and free culture causes, living in a basement for a few hundred dollars a month, despite having top tier skillsets and turning down job offers for $200,000+ salaries at big tech companies, which is to also risk losing their ability to afford a life where children are an option.
Originally posted as commentary on the fabulus Jeff Geerling's #OSSThanks video — video comment seems flagged as spam, as it is no longer viewable.