My understanding is that, for now, it would be too difficult/time-consuming for our administrative people to accept small donations. This is a question that gets asked from time to time, and I hope that someday we will be able to. In the meantime, I would encourage individuals to think about a few people who maintain software they rely on (in OCaml or otherwise), that are not currently employed by a company for this work (or in a stable contracting agreement), and inquire about funding them directly.
Re. bug bounties: I learned somewhat recently that some people and companies in the OCaml ecosystem (for example ahrefs, cc @Khady with which I discussed this) have used bug bounties to fund development in third-party tools they rely on. See for example:
- opam: local cache of binary packages (open bounty)
- lwt.ppx reports incorrect locations (closed/claimed bounty)
Ahrefs (one of our sponsors) suggested to the foundation that we promote these “small tasks for pay” opportunities, but we have not had the time to do anything in that direction yet.