I think it is difficult to get these movements going among individuals. I think it is easier to establish this as a cultural norm among those businesses that make money from open source. If the goal is to raise more money for open source projects, then the fundraising will work best if it is some dedicated amount of a company's profits. I think the consumers of open source technologies would appreciate knowing that some tiny percentage of their funds go back to the projects that make it all possible. For instance, if every ISP (using open source software) was committed to sending .01% of their profits to the Apache Foundation, it would offer Apache a degree of independence from those who currently pay its bills, and I, for one, would be pleased to know that some of my money was going to the software that makes my sites possible.
The donations need to be automated as much as possible. At wpquestions.com we send out some small amount of money every month to the people who have created plugins for WordPress, whenever a question is posted about that plugin. The whole process is automated, no one needs to think about it. I think establishing this as a cultural norm throughout the open source community would help make the open source eco-system more vibrant. And lots of small payments from many small businesses probably allows greater freedom of maneuver (for the open source projects) than having a few big projects paid for by a few big corporations - simply looking at Oracle's handling of Java convinces me of the dangers of having all funding come from just a few sources.
The donations need to be automated as much as possible. At wpquestions.com we send out some small amount of money every month to the people who have created plugins for WordPress, whenever a question is posted about that plugin. The whole process is automated, no one needs to think about it. I think establishing this as a cultural norm throughout the open source community would help make the open source eco-system more vibrant. And lots of small payments from many small businesses probably allows greater freedom of maneuver (for the open source projects) than having a few big projects paid for by a few big corporations - simply looking at Oracle's handling of Java convinces me of the dangers of having all funding come from just a few sources.