Forward-thinking companies have shown their willingness to fund the Open Source software they depend on. But it is not always trivial to figure out which Open Source maintainers a large codebase depends on, and how to actually pay those maintainers.

At thanks.dev, we have created a platform that scans companies' codebases to identify the Open Source maintainers whose projects these codebases depend on. We then give companies an easy and financially transparent way to pay these maintainers.

But this approach can still be improved in order to secure more funds for Open Source maintainers. For one thing, it is non-trivial to algorithmically decide what portion of donated funds should go to which dependencies. And more granular funding targets might incentivise donations, for example by allowing maintainers to mark certain issues as requiring funding, and connecting these funding requests directly with companies that depend on this software.

I would like to present some ideas for algorithmic and non-algorithmic allocation of funding, and request feedback from the community.