1. It feels like you are at risk of some survivorship bias here. Yes, the software that currently exist were apparently made anyway, and is popular enough to be

1. It feels like you are at risk of some survivorship bias here. Yes, the software that currently exist were apparently made anyway, and is popular enough to be replaced if it went missing. But you have no way to quantify how many possibly useful or innovative OSS projects were never made because of the lack of financial opportunities. 2. I feel the whole idea of this kind of open source patronage / funding is to decouple the market value of the software (which is $0) from the compensation to the contributors for their time and effort (which I think should be above $0 in an ideal world)