The thought is that the maintainer would own a share of the asset and if they retire, they would be free to sell or hold that share. Maybe for something as triv

The thought is that the maintainer would own a share of the asset and if they retire, they would be free to sell or hold that share. Maybe for something as trivial as a button it isn't obvious where the value is but for entire libraries, etc. it could provide economic incentive to recognize valuable projects and invest in them while they are still young. You could "own a little piece" of your favorite framework along with the maintainer(s). The concept of a fork even maps pretty well to how forks work in the blockchain. You would own a share of each fork if you owned a piece of the original project.