I do most of my programming as one-off work ("scaffolding" code for testing, data analysis, etc.) for a small company + have benefited a lot from open-source software projects over the past 5-10 years. Many of the libraries I've used are free and have saved my company money.
I don't have the time/skills to give much back to these projects (other than filing bug reports from time to time), but I've wondered for a while if there's any way, perhaps through a foundation like Apache, for there to be an economic incentive for corporate users of open-source software, to make nominal contributions towards continuing development?
For instance, if I could make a case that $500/yr is going to provide some direct benefit towards improved software, it would be a pretty easy sell as we spend a lot more than that just for software maintenance on commercial software. Unfortunately since this software is free, there's no real incentive for us to make such a contribution.
Any thoughts?