@SnoozyRests@cyberpunk.lol Kind of related: I've had *many* discussions with people over the years about donation-based funding for open-source projects. Almost every single one ran aground on this exact same assumption, or some version of it.

"How do we make sure that nobody is freeloading?"

"There would be lots of people who wouldn't donate, this would never work to pay the bills!"

And so on, and so forth. I'd try explaining to them that it doesn't actually *matter* whether everyone donates, it's not like selling something, just enough donations need to be made to cover the costs.

I was mostly met with complete bafflement, and people having a lot of trouble internalizing this idea, often just responding with "let's agree to disagree" or repeating arguments that assumed everybody would need to donate, despite what I'd just explained.

This is of course very different from mutual aid, given that it was often about donations to people who *could* find other ways to pay the bills (and just wouldn't be able to work on the open-source stuff then), but the dynamics are strikingly similar...