If I could invest in, say, my favorite UI component in an open source project and that investment pumped up the dev(s) or other early investors wouldn't that create a strong economic base for developing software?
Or maybe I could invest in a particular iteration of a machine learning model. Or a particular dataset. Or a function. I'd love to hear from experts. Thanks.
One year later another person buys you the button for $2. I guess the maintainer gets a cut, hopefully nobody forked the project because the maintainer decided to retire.
Isn't it better if the second person just donate the $2 to the maintainer?