Here's how to do it: combine dev-bootcamps with FSF.

People already pay big bucks to learn how to code, use that to fund the senior devs, the junior devs gain the experience they need to change their career trajectory.

This guy should not have been the director and doing the majority of the legwork for 25 years! He needs to be put in a position to get an awesome job at either classic big tech corporate, then some high prestige research unit. And there should be an understudy in the queue set to take over the work, and eventually earn his reward in the afterlife.

>The OpenSSL project management team consists of four people, and the entire development group consists of 11 members, out of which 10 are volunteers; there is only one full-time employee, Stephen Henson, the lead developer

I mean, it's only OpenSSL which was for a long time the foundation of much of the online economy.

Or the various BSD's.

Humble Bundle does this for indie games and other digital goods. I'm guessing they've thought about doing something similar for software like you mention but decided not to for some reason. It would be interesting to know why.

Perhaps the model needs support / services included.

Edit: or perhaps humble bundle is just more oriented to consumer goods.

If it's fundable, then what would it actually do?

Presumably we're past the point where anything with a .com in the name gets showered in VC money.

5. PyPy

6. Django