Supposedly it's a promise that the code will be maintained

For me it would be the convenience of not having to choose which project I do and do not donate to (as each project has a baseline donation amount (even $1) to make it cost-effective (ie: paypal fees), so I have to make a choice to divide the amount I'm willing to donate each month.

I can thus dispose some money each month and feel that I'm donating (even if it's just a few cent) to every project I use. If more people find this easy, a lot of small donations will make a big one.

Correction: I appear to have misread some of sales copy to potential subscribers, there is no promise of individual support involved, just continued maintenance.

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Tidelift is promising them the stars about services while not being involved at all in their fulfilment (no: see chevron above), except for maybe threatening to kick out their "lifted" projects if they don't deliver. (or maybe even sue whoever pressed "lift your package"?)

The more benign interpretation, as in a peer comment, is "allow me to donate without figuring out the distribution myself". That sounds perfectly reasonable, but it would be much more convincing if they had less promises in their pitch to subscribers and a "pay as you like" option (here's n $, please figure out the appropriate distribution for me while taking your cut").

Also, with the well established "failure or unbounded financial success" model of VC funding, how could one ever expect tidelift to not eventually abuse their position by taking seen ever higher cut? Maybe if it was a bootstrapped business, one could reasonably hope for a promise of only taking what is needed to be held up, but anything with actual investors needs a more formal arrangement. Maybe a charity/coop/nonprofit/foundation with clearly defined and enforceable bylaws that transparently buys implementation, operation and services from an associated for-profit might do, but "trust us, we have cute toddlers and pets" just isn't enough.