Crypto has crashed a bit but there could be some opportunity for an ethereum style contract to help here. Opensource projects are like the ideal 'DAC'(decentralized autonomous corporations) so they could have funding pools that pay out for feature or bug additions. Basically if enough of the DAC vote a feature or bug is important and you contribute code that addresses said issue, you get paid. Similarly OSS licenses could shift to a scheme where if your MRR > $X you are obligated to kick either ether or equivalent code value into pool. Self sustaining, self governing. Corporations might even open source more projects to basically outsource work where hiring dedicated software engineering doesn't make sense.
How exactly is a "smart" "contract" going to decide if some code fixes some bug? And how is it going to measure someones MRR?
The fundamental problem with "smart contracts" is that they are neither "smart", nor are they "contracts". Contracts deal with ambiguous meatspace issues, and are resolved through courts. Smart contracts are in no form a novel idea, they are just trading/finance bots with some added blockchain to get the suckers to give up their money. They cannot make any decisions on things that can't be verified on the network itself, which includes things like "who does this apple belong to?", "does this code solve the issue?" etc.
Smart contracts are smart enough to allow formation of groups of devs, form a vote and disperse funds. Devs who are directly responsible for maintaining a portion of code can vote if the contributed code solves the issue.
If a trusted group of developers is in charge of dispersing funds, why involve a blockchain/smart contracts at all? You can just donate to the developers, and they can disperse funds according to some predefined terms. The DAO or whatever is exactly that, but with extra steps. In either case, you still have to trust that the people in charge of distributing the funds will do so according to the terms that were agreed upon(fixing bugs or adding features or whatever).
They'd still be trusted in the sense that they decide if a bug was fixed or not, but at least transparency would be achieved. You could independently check exactly where your money went.
