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Customers make an open-source business financially stable, not donations. We tried to fund Plausible through donations. In 6 months, we got 6 donations. $5 each. $30 total. In the same 6 months, paid subscriptions grew from $400 to $8,500 MRR. Open source needs a business model, not a tip jar.

Yeah, funding work in open source through donations is extremely difficult, and you can easily reach saturation of your audience. Once you're at that point nothing you do will particularly increase donations.

People also have a bit of a bias here: well I could donate and get nothing (extra) in return, or I could buy a SaaS subscription and get something in return