I used to be heavily invested in GNU #Octave, a free #Matlab replacement. That was a bit of a more ambitious goal, because Godot isn't trying to be exactly like Unity, but Octave is trying to be exactly like Matlab. The overall problem, however, is similar.
It's a difficult, mostly thankless task. Users don't care what it takes to make it look exactly like what it's supposed to be replacing. Photoshop users going to the GNU IMP, Matlab users going to Octave, Maya users going to Blender, Chrome users going to Firefox... they all want the same thing: basically the same software, but without the fees, restrictions, or anti-user misfeatures. It is extremely draining to continuously disappoint people who aren't getting exactly the same software but without paying for it.
A few users will offer donations, but never enough to rival the budget of the software they're fleeing from. Nowadays there's better infrastructure to collect from these benevolent donors and get a steady income than when I was working on Octave. This offers some hope.
All this to say: if you're migrating to better, less enshittified software, donate if you can. If you cannot, then at least try to be kind and considerate of the smaller, more grassroots organisation and individuals that are trying to give you a comparable experience with no strings attached. :)
@davidmarsh There have been attempts like Bounty Source, Freedom Sponsors, or Liberapay but I don't think any of them ever really took off.
I think Github itself sort of has some infrastructure for recurring donations.
Of course, an important thing is that orgs have to opt in to this, because as the root of all evil, just introducing money into an org that isn't ready to handle it can cause problems and disputes.
@pawelszczur@JordiGH oh, I'm on Linux and I avoid Autodesk stuff. FreeCAD is awesome, I was commenting on the pressure they are getting form Fusion refugees.
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