I had this idea recently: if people are willing to pay a small fee monthly for streaming services or Photoshop, surely some would also be willing to pay a similar amount for the FOSS they use. Even a few cents monthly would add up to quite a substantial sum over a vast userbase*. In light of this, I've started working on an app that records your app usage, and then at the end of the month splits whatever sum of money you want to donate amongst the apps in proportion to the time you spent using them.
Then it will (hopefully) let you donate to all of those projects with a single click.
Since it's only halfway finished, I'm posting this to gague how much interest there would be in such an app. Could you could see yourself using something like this? Do you have any ideas for what I should add/change?
*(It also occurred to me that perhaps one way to fix surveillance capitalism on the internet would be if every HTTP get request came with a microtransaction (eg 0.01¢) attached; those without money would gain those 0.01¢ by seeing ads, like today)
i wouldnt personally allow any app to track my usage, but others can be different. my biggest point would be against the one click payment. i would not want any app that tracks usage to even connect to the internet, let alone anything related to payments
having donation links is good enough.
there may also be the question of how does it track the usage. running constantly in the background? ill probably want a system tray icon to indicate it then
Definitely agree. If they could somehow make it a Flatpak with minimal permissions I would def check it out. Otherwise, I don't use any unsandboxed software to avoid apps having arbitrary permissions.