Most backers gave 5 or 10 pounds, but on average ~500 people gave ~35 each.
You might be half-right about perceived value though - I think anyone that is a serious Gimp user see value in the software, but might still think 400 is too steep, given that it is free now. But I also think many users would be willing to pay for getting some features in/some polish done - personally I'd say my current limit would be around 100 USD for any one OSS project.
Now one one hand, Debian does much more than any small project, but I also think it's more likely that 10 000 USD would do more for something like the Gimp, than for Debian (assuming we had a developer or two on standby that could take the opportunity of devoting a month full time on getting some pain points resolved, say).
I'm reminded about the kickstarter for Django migrations: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewgodwin/schema-mig...
Most backers gave 5 or 10 pounds, but on average ~500 people gave ~35 each.
You might be half-right about perceived value though - I think anyone that is a serious Gimp user see value in the software, but might still think 400 is too steep, given that it is free now. But I also think many users would be willing to pay for getting some features in/some polish done - personally I'd say my current limit would be around 100 USD for any one OSS project.
Now one one hand, Debian does much more than any small project, but I also think it's more likely that 10 000 USD would do more for something like the Gimp, than for Debian (assuming we had a developer or two on standby that could take the opportunity of devoting a month full time on getting some pain points resolved, say).