I agree. This is being done currently by the Clojurists Together organization. They fund 4 open source Clojure projects per quarter, and based on the desires of their members (anyone who pays into it), I think they fund 50% established projects and 50% speculative.
Re:Sponsoring Open Source Developers
by dantiberian on Tuesday December 15, 2020 @04:21PM
(#25435425)
Hey! Secretary for Clojurists Together Foundation here. This is roughly correct. It's not a strict 50/50 split from quarter to quarter as it depends on applications and what our members are looking for, but we try to fund a mix of established and experimental projects.
This quarter we funded Calva and clj-kondo which are more established, and O'Doyle Rules and ClojisR which are more experimental.
After all, if an open source project hits off with users without the money, it clearly didn't need the money. While who knows what really great things die because the authors needed to focus on stuff that pays them directly instead.