I had this idea recently: if people are willing to pay a small fee monthly for streaming services or Photoshop, surely some would also be willing to pay a similar amount for the FOSS they use. Even a few cents monthly would add up to quite a substantial sum over a vast userbase*. In light of this, I’ve started working on an app that records your app usage, and then at the end of the month splits whatever sum of money you want to donate amongst the apps in proportion to the time you spent using them.
Then it will (hopefully) let you donate to all of those projects with a single click.
Since it’s only halfway finished, I’m posting this to gague how much interest there would be in such an app. Could you could see yourself using something like this? Do you have any ideas for what I should add/change?
*(It also occurred to me that perhaps one way to fix surveillance capitalism on the internet would be if every HTTP get request came with a microtransaction (eg 0.01¢) attached; those without money would gain those 0.01¢ by seeing ads, like today)
Well, i just remembered the nexus mods and vortex Mod manager business model. All downloads are counted and you are asked to give an endorsement of the mod after a period of time. There is then a option to donate and you can choose your allocation if any. Something like that could only run once per month and be able to give good info. While tracking use time can be like beneficial Spyware, I think I would still like the reminder without that service.