The way I see it, this is a net positive development rather than a negative. Will it have some effect on the margins where developers who would rather be paid m

The way I see it, this is a net positive development rather than a negative. Will it have some effect on the margins where developers who would rather be paid might not contribute to open source projects anymore? Probably. But the idea of FOSS is that the works are free as in freedom, not free as in beer. If people are willing to pay to ensure that an open source project continues to thrive, that makes the ecosystem more viable in the long term, not less. This Kickstarter only demonstrates the pent up demand for this sort of thing. Not everyone can contribute time or knowledge, so they might instead contribute money. Besides, many of the most popular open source projects are already implicitly backed by paid developers (Linux, WebKit, etc.). Nobody seems to have a problem with that.