It’s a good idea to support individual developers. I’ve also noticed that concentrated money is more productive than diffuse money. So $1,000 to each of 10 developers is less likely to make a difference than $10,000 to one developer.
The projects that need support also change from month to month. The diversity of OCSF’s generous actions are a good example. Foundations address both problems: concentrate resources and direct them where needed.
Anyway, I missed this when I read the thread yesterday, but I found @gasche’s original explanation about small donations helpful. I’ve quoted it here for convenience:
The legal setup of the foundation … is such that we have lawyer-type people make decisions about how we are allowed to spend and receive money … As a consequence, we cannot “just” use various funding schemes that are easy for private developers to setup (“use Patreon”, “sign up for Github Sponsors”, etc.); we have to ask lawyers and be patient.
Perhaps a trusted member of the OCaml community could set up GitHub Sponsors on her own private account, then become a Bronze sponsor for OCSF, acting as a pass-through entity for the community. I’m no lawyer, so this may not be feasible.