I feel like the distributions have completely dropped the ball in this regard. They're positioned ideally to at least have some measure of what packages are mo

I feel like the distributions have completely dropped the ball in this regard. They're positioned ideally to at least have some measure of what packages are most frequently installed. Even with the use of volunteer public mirrors that share no access logs with the distributor, the package management architecture could be structured to consult distro-controlled metadata servers in locating the mirrors and preserving some visibility into which packages are most installed. They control the package tooling, they should have considered this. With even vague knowledge of which packages are most used, they could be distributing donations to those upstream projects. They obviously already have the dependency graph as well, so even without popularity metrics, can already know which packages are cornerstones (kernel, libc, openssl, systemd, mesa immediately come to mind). The distro installers and package management tools should be providing convenient ways for end-users to donate via whatever mechanisms, paypal, patreon, bitcoin, etc. Just give me one mechanism to throw money at my distro of choice with the clear indication that it will be dispersed to upstream developers of important software. Also give me an easy way to explicitly allocate my funds to specific packages if I am so inclined. Make it all transparent on a web site where the money goes on a high level, how much is coming in, and which projects are getting what %age of that, what % is administration overhead, etc.