I think this model would work better if he wanted to take time off to start up and develop a new OSS project.

I can see a lot of people donating to get 'Some really cool project' built.

But I doubt that faster bug fixes and improved documentation in open source reporting software is worth 60$ to too many people if you take away the feel good factor of donating to open source

On the other hand, i certainly know of businesses using open source projects that would happily pay someone external to fix a bug or add a feature to a given project. Why they wouldn't just assign one of their own developers is a mystery, but that's the way it is.

There are plenty of businesses that do pay people to work on various open source projects. Google, Apple, IBM, possibly even Microsoft.

The Perl Foundation (http://foundation.perl.org/) has done this quite a bit. There's a good model to follow.

Hacker News' own benhoyt has http://micropledge.com/ which seems well suited to the task.

I find it hard to convince a corporation to donate money for an OSS. It would need approval from people not familiar with OSS. May be the model is to do it, thru consulting. For example, start working in Ruport, then advertise your self as a Ruport consultant, find some customers that are willing to pay for support or consulting, as you are able to charge for it, you can spend more time working in the project. I think several people have been able to do it. Companies are used to pay for support or consulting, they are not used to pay for something that is already free.

Some companies have been able to do it with great success. SpringOne, JBoss, JGoodies come to my mind.

There are a number of examples of this. For instance, the guy who developed Passage, Jason Rohrer, lives entirely off donations (http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason-rohrer/supportMyWork...) and he releases all his software under the GNU GPL.

Thanks for posting this; I enjoyed reading about his lifestyle:

http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason-rohrer/simpleLife.ht...

People who are determined can Find a Way.

I'd throw in some cash the second he decides to try this. Working full-time on something is much more productive than working evenings.

is he working on something you need, or would you just support him for the sake of idealism?

if you do need the end product, then it seems reasonable enough. but if it's idealism you seek, how many hackers should set up donation bins before you stop donating to each new one?

Something similar happened before with the Haiku OS project back in 2005 when Axel Dörflel worked on it full time for a few months using donated funds. (Link: http://haikunews.org/print/1125)

Bram Cohen (who supports his family off of grateful BitTorrent users) is the exception. A lot of programmers are paid to work on open source (however, they are mostly employed by large Open Source advocates like IBM).

I'm not so sure he supported his family on donations for very long. BitTorrent turned into a pretty well funded venture (of which he is chief scientist) a while ago.