I feel like this also speaks to the wider trend in OSS. Businesses in many (the majority of?) and their programmers have come to expect free compilers, developer tools, libraries, security patches... and documentation and all that entails.
"Open source," projects that are well funded appear "free," which seems to distort perceptions and opinions.
Maintaining good documentation, like maintaining libraries, and good compilers takes a lot of on going effort. This creates value and deserves compensation.
If not corporate sponsors, if not a patreon style model, what else can we do? Does everyone on the web contribute a little bit through volume collective licensing when you buy a domain or host a server or from profits of commercial entities on the web platform?
The EU could probably spare a dime on Firefox and MDN, the US and other big nations too. I find public infrastructure of the internet is something I wouldn't mind my taxes being spent on.
Of course this opens another bag of problems of how to decide on which projects to finance how much or unwanted govermental influence on the projects. But I would still say it is a realistic alternative to corporate sponsors and patreon style funding.
"Open source," projects that are well funded appear "free," which seems to distort perceptions and opinions.
Maintaining good documentation, like maintaining libraries, and good compilers takes a lot of on going effort. This creates value and deserves compensation.
If not corporate sponsors, if not a patreon style model, what else can we do? Does everyone on the web contribute a little bit through volume collective licensing when you buy a domain or host a server or from profits of commercial entities on the web platform?