An additional alternative to fellowships: 1) start a cryptocurrency that is tied to the Project 2) each project release pays N coins to developers/maintainers based on merit (e.g., lines of code) 3) third parties can purchase coins to place bounties on requested features and bug fixes, which are paid out upon release. The source code stays open and third parties have the option to accelerate improvements and bug fixes with financial incentives, which creates and economy to reward the developers and maintainers.