For awesome FOSS projects, like ripgrep, I wish there was a way to donate praise or goodwill, in addition to donating money. In other words, people can write in a special area dedicated to words of appreciation and gratitude. All those FOSS maintainers need to know just how much positivity there is.
Obviously it won't fix the damage of those who are rude or entitled, but perhaps it'll help provide a boost.
I appreciate the intent here! For positive vibes, I think emails or social media is good. But for money, I'm not sure it would work for me. I'm just going to copy what I wrote in r/rust[1]:
---
I think the various things people are trying to do to fund open source contributors and maintainers is a great thing. I love what GitHub is doing with its sponsorships and encourage folks to use that if it helps them.
But for me, I do not want money to get involved with what is right now a volunteer activity that I perform exclusively in my free time. If I accepted money, then at least for me personally, it would magnify a lot of the problems I struggle with in my blog post. I do not want that.
If folks insist, then I generally advocate donating it to a cause they find important. The ones I like are Wikipedia, The Internet Archive and Rails Girls.
Obviously it won't fix the damage of those who are rude or entitled, but perhaps it'll help provide a boost.