There is a difference between one-off bounties and continuous sponsorhips. - Stable income vs. unplannable amount of bounties - Bounties generally don't cover

There is a difference between one-off bounties and continuous sponsorhips. - Stable income vs. unplannable amount of bounties - Bounties generally don't cover general maintenance work for a project (e.g. updating dependencies) - Bounties (as they are implemented today) generally only pay the contributor, and not the maintainers, which can also have significant cost in reviewing a feature - Bounties traditionally have been so disproportionally small compared to the work required that they don't come close to provide a reasonable hourly rate for contributors (I think you'll find enough articles that go into more details on the difference between the two.) Bounty platforms have been around for ages, and I don't know a single project that is able to finance itself from that. Even for the OBS example you mentioned, it the bounty was a good way to get the ball rolling on a specific issue, but the overall maintenance is still financed by monthly sponsoships. One-off donations might be a nice supplement, but they don't form a solid foundation.