And having some command like "npm donate" that essentially does the same algorithm as tidelift and prints a paypal address for each package.
I'd like that better than having yet another middleman siphoning a part of the cashflow.
I think the real problem would be what is the meta-tag? There isn't really a standard for "send money to this URL". You could support Paypal I guess, but do they have an API for sending money? And then you're reliant on Paypal which is fairly notorious for just cutting off anything vaguely unusual (like this would be) and keeping the money.
That’s likely the simplest way and doesn’t require PayPal or revealing identities of maintainers.
Also works well by nesting encrypting the wallet private with each maintainer so wallet can only be used with all maintainers in agreement. Or establish a smart contract, etc etc.
This seems easy to set up. But many won’t pay.
- some use paypal, some use patreon, some use neither so where do you send the money
- even if it was either paypal or patreon, they would take their cut which is unfair.
- even if organizations/foundations would give their bank account info, you could probably use stripe to send the money to the right place, but not sure.
I would be happy to discuss about this by email as I think it is an idea that could be further explored.