This is a fascinating point. I absolutely agree that injecting money into software can have unintended consequences. After speaking with a lot of maintainers, one common theme is that the widespread commercial use of open-source software has already created this direct link between money and work. Maintainers experience pressure to continue developing their project to keep up with users, issues and feature requests. The more popular the project, the more value is being created on top of their software, and the higher the pressure. Because maintainers are often required to work on their projects in their spare time, working around a full-time job, it’s easy to burn out and stop working on the project altogether. We’re using this contract route as a way to make open-source sustainable for maintainers and establish clear expectations for both maintainers and companies. Setting those expectations is key to giving maintainers their ideal work scenario where they won’t have to sacrifice quality for speed.