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One problem with this approach is still that depending what country you're from, you're essentially creating an "open source gig economy" where developers work for scraps from company donations without health/retirement benefits: https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/03/25/troubles-with-the-open-...

What I'd like to see instead of see people encouraging developers and open source maintainers start companies and create positive sum dynamics in wealth created.

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Open Collective team member here. I totally agree that the gig economy approach is unhealthy. A big goal of ours is to help open source creators earn a decent living making open source that can rival what they'd get paid working for a commercial company. We've managed to facilitate that for quite a few projects, but as an ecosystem we have a long way to go. We need way more companies to step up to the plate and way more money flowing in. We also support projects who build companies and commercial offerings out of their open source projects, as long as they remain genuinely open source, and have many Collectives with parallel companies in addition.

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