Your article does raise a few great points... about Github specifically. But not about funding sustainable OSS development in general.
Open source also is not a business model. It's a principle that relates to intellectual rights and copyright: the author explicitly stating that they won't exercise their rights as to what others do with their work, provided then that others share any modifications under the same terms of use. That's open source in a nutshell.
The direct implication, then, is that any business model that hinges on selling licenses that give a very restricted permission on the use of (a copy of) the software, is excluded. Which is exactly how games and products from Adobe or Microsoft are sold: you buy a license - a permission from the original author - to use the software.
Github itself has never been a marketplace to sell software. There are no affordances that allows anyone to sell and buy license keys or whatever. It's always been a descendant in the spirit of SourceForge or Freshmeat: a platform for hosting codebases via version control. No more, no less. Github pushes open source as a matter of principle because it's - above all - excellent marketing that doesn't need complex tooling: simply adding a LICENSE.md file with the GPL or MIT license is already enough.
Open source is not flawed, as you state. It's above all a principled choice you make. And it's a choice you make depending on the type of value you want to extract from the project you're writing.
In your article, you are lamenting the low income numbers from publishing code under an open source license on Github. Well, ask yourself this: Maybe it's not open source that's flawed, but the other way around: The tools you choose to extract value not fitting your expectations. If you really want to monetize software, then maybe you're better off looking into a closed source license and a platform that does allow you to sell license keys. Much like what Sublime or InteliJ and such do.
It's true though that funding Open Source projects is problematic. But this has always been true for any non-profit venture: Ranging from charity, culture, environmentalist causes or other types of citizen activism that doesn't involve setting up a private business. Open Source software is no exception, and unless you're able to charge for consultancy or derivative products (e.g. a service build on top of OSS software), you're funding options are very much limited to grants, philanthropy or donations.
Nadia Eghbal did an excellent study for the Ford Foundation that sums up the issues with funding open source nicely: Roads & Bridges, the unseen labor behind our digital infrastructure:
Beyond that, the pool & wallet solution you're proposing is above all an attempt to incentivise a specific type of funding: private, individual donations. I think it's a great idea in it's own right, and something worth considering. But it should be clear that it's a far cry from a silver bullet that will solve the disparity between the many profiting from labor of a few against a low financial reward for their efforts.
Personally, I think that if you're willing to work on your own open source projects, you have to mindful that you exclude the possibility to directly derive wealth from what you've build.
It's up to you then to figure out the alternatives: e.g. selling training, workshops, support,... or maybe getting hired by a company who are willing to let you work part time on your OSS project, or getting publicly funded because your project caters to the public good (e.g. culture, health, education, mobility,...)
I'm cognizant that I'm replying to someone named CaptArmchair. Based on your handle, I say: well-named.
Look, I'm sure you remember the heartbleed scenario a few years back... the moment when we all realized that the human behind one of the most critical pieces of our infrastructure stack was a slave to his sense of responsibility, but he lacked charisma and hustle and social presence such that he wasn't able to keep it together. His mental and emotional health were sorely suffering. Once people realized what was happening, the plate got passed around and from what I understand, things are a lot better now, for that one guy on that one project. Maybe it's wrong to over-focus on one guy, but his example is top of mind as I say the following:
You could not write the above if you weren't in a position of being privileged to do so. You can wax poetic about how writing free software is an expression of the divine all you want, but meanwhile the entire world is reconfiguring itself around software and a lot of those folks are going to need a source of income even if you're already doing well enough that you don't care to push the issue.
Essentially: you are not factoring in the way the world is changing. Most people building software and publishing it on Github, by numbers, are people who are using their Github profile as a resume. It's not been about RMS and ESR for a long time.
It's cool if you don't need to pay the bills, but don't demonize people who are hoping all of this energy invested in learning to code need to eat.
Hm... that's not at all what I intended to convey. And I think you're putting things in quite extreme terms.
The field of software / digital engineering has grown an exploitative side. This is absolutely true. To be crystal clear, without diving into detail and derailing the thread: I find this evolution reprehensible and not how humans ought to be treated.
Is that dynamic then the result of Open Source as a princple of intellectual rights? Is it really, truly an inevitability that taking on Open Source projects and pushing code on Github now singularly serves as a resume of sorts for applying for a paid job? Is giving up your intellectual rights by default really the only way to ensure that you can make a living from writing code?
Because of it is, well, that should rather lead to bleak conclusions about the state of the value that developers are willing to attribute to the time and effort they pour into their craft, the labour market, labour protection, and societal values as a whole. Instead of concluding that Open Source itself is the problem (it is not) and people ought to donate a buck-and-a-half to anyone who has a repo with an arbitrary number of stars on Github.
You could draw parallels with other fields such as academics, film, music, games, books, fashion and so on. So, exploitation is not an entirely new dynamic either. Plenty of aspiring graduates, actors, writers, musicians, models, graphic designers,... are scrounging by, and get exploited in the process, while relatively few end up in a good place. Usually, their complaints are met with a short, unsympathetic "should have chosen a real career/job instead!" quip. If I'm allowed to play the devil's advocate: Should we add software developers to that list as well?
Of course not! In fact, nobody deserves to be outright reviled for the professional career they pursue.
The problems you describe are societal. They are the net result of larger economic dynamics in a rapidly globalized, free and unregulated marketplace. A markpetlace in which a few smart people understood how to leverage open source software in order to accumulate enough leverage to enter the financial market, moving on to accrue even far greater wealth. And what you describe is just another take on the Tragedy of the Commons.
Like I said, if the world is reconfiguring around software, it should be held to pay the true price of maintaining that infrastructure. Much as is pointed out exactly by Eghbal's study. After all, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
You're making some good, if aspirational points, but I'm still not convinced. After all, artists have had patrons for a long time. The gallery system is a relatively new invention.
Do I believe that artistic creators are a net-win to society? 100% Do I wish that artistic professions were seen as worthy of support? Yes I do. But in actual today reality, most artists can announce that they are doing a show, staging a production, what have you, and make some money.
I would argue that the only way for someone to approximate this in 2020 as a developer of creative but not economy-driving things is for Github to adopt a pool as described by the OP.
One thing I want to be really clear about is that people shouldn't support projects with lots of stars just because they have lots of stars. Stars are a passible metric for evaluating which tool to choose, perhaps. But I think the power of the pool concept is that Github could hit you up when you git clone, or maybe even occasionally ping you with a "hey, are you finding this useful? consider adding it to your pool". Or how about opt-in reminders like "hey, you're about to add your 80th project to the pool, but at $80 pledged that would put your contribution below $1 for each project. no shade intended, but how cool would it be if you kept your pool >$2/project? it'll be the best value for $160 this month."
It's perfectly valid to leverage Github and open source as a means to an end: either to secure an income as an employee through public exposure of your work, or secure patronage through donations in order to attain a type of (partial) financial independence that allows for creative freedom.
Either way, every line of code that gets pushed in this way, was never directly commissioned nor sold to a paying customer. And that, well, that's a choice between different business models. It's not an inevitability as you make it seem.
It's wonderful to see how open source has flourished, and people ought to be compensated for the work they willingly and consciously distribute u free. I'm more then happy to pledge a small donation left or right, or contribute a patch, a piece of documentation or do a bit of mouth-to-mouth promotion.
Lamenting then that you can't cover your living expenses through donations and shifting the responsibility towards Github e.g. they should provide more affordances to funnel more people towards donating? That's quite an explicit take on monetization which is deserving of critique. Especially if the alternative entails, well, starting to properly value, market and sell your work, which is how the market essentially works.
As I said, that doesn't exclude me from acknowledging wealth disparity, and the fact that loads of people try to use open source and Github as a jumping board to secure a steady wage. I think that's really important: I've hired people in the past for enthusiastically showing and discussing their work, as it shows so much over who they are a a person, what drives them, and how they think.
Finally, let's not forget that Github isn't a charity nor a public administration: it's a private company with a profit motive as well. Which is a can of worm into itself if you start considering centralization, walled gardens and the nefarious consequences of those dynamics.
(By the way, patronage or philanthropy, as you mentioned, historically wasn't driven by purel altruistic motives: nobility employed artists as a way to flaunt their wealth and their power towards their peers.)
Your article does raise a few great points... about Github specifically. But not about funding sustainable OSS development in general.
Open source also is not a business model. It's a principle that relates to intellectual rights and copyright: the author explicitly stating that they won't exercise their rights as to what others do with their work, provided then that others share any modifications under the same terms of use. That's open source in a nutshell.
The direct implication, then, is that any business model that hinges on selling licenses that give a very restricted permission on the use of (a copy of) the software, is excluded. Which is exactly how games and products from Adobe or Microsoft are sold: you buy a license - a permission from the original author - to use the software.
Github itself has never been a marketplace to sell software. There are no affordances that allows anyone to sell and buy license keys or whatever. It's always been a descendant in the spirit of SourceForge or Freshmeat: a platform for hosting codebases via version control. No more, no less. Github pushes open source as a matter of principle because it's - above all - excellent marketing that doesn't need complex tooling: simply adding a LICENSE.md file with the GPL or MIT license is already enough.
Open source is not flawed, as you state. It's above all a principled choice you make. And it's a choice you make depending on the type of value you want to extract from the project you're writing.
In your article, you are lamenting the low income numbers from publishing code under an open source license on Github. Well, ask yourself this: Maybe it's not open source that's flawed, but the other way around: The tools you choose to extract value not fitting your expectations. If you really want to monetize software, then maybe you're better off looking into a closed source license and a platform that does allow you to sell license keys. Much like what Sublime or InteliJ and such do.
It's true though that funding Open Source projects is problematic. But this has always been true for any non-profit venture: Ranging from charity, culture, environmentalist causes or other types of citizen activism that doesn't involve setting up a private business. Open Source software is no exception, and unless you're able to charge for consultancy or derivative products (e.g. a service build on top of OSS software), you're funding options are very much limited to grants, philanthropy or donations.
Nadia Eghbal did an excellent study for the Ford Foundation that sums up the issues with funding open source nicely: Roads & Bridges, the unseen labor behind our digital infrastructure:
https://www.fordfoundation.org/work/learning/research-report...
It's a recommended read on this topic.
Beyond that, the pool & wallet solution you're proposing is above all an attempt to incentivise a specific type of funding: private, individual donations. I think it's a great idea in it's own right, and something worth considering. But it should be clear that it's a far cry from a silver bullet that will solve the disparity between the many profiting from labor of a few against a low financial reward for their efforts.
Personally, I think that if you're willing to work on your own open source projects, you have to mindful that you exclude the possibility to directly derive wealth from what you've build.
It's up to you then to figure out the alternatives: e.g. selling training, workshops, support,... or maybe getting hired by a company who are willing to let you work part time on your OSS project, or getting publicly funded because your project caters to the public good (e.g. culture, health, education, mobility,...)