I should add that I am broke myself so it's a bit high and mighty of me to say people should donate when I have not done so yet.
I have started by at least supporting game developers on Steam. Mostly indie to medium size studio ones. Again, I can't stand the AAA game DRM key crap.
I am interested in paying donations to free and open source software I regularly use and have into my workflow. I will completely ignore your project if you make me deal with license keys. The Grayjay method is ok but would prefer that code and buttons not be dedicated to getting in my way. I hope that the mentality of paying for what you use becomes more common in FOSS culture so that prompts aren't needed.
That said if your broke, don't dontate. Take advantage of it being free and when you get a good job again, then consider helping out the developers.
In recent personal experience, I recently changed the motherboard on my Winblows VR gaming PC and It wouldn't recognize my legit product key anymore. I don't have patience for DRM shit so I activated it with KMS. Activation keys are a pain in the arse.
I emphasized It's use for VR gaming just in case someone tries to sell me on the Linux Proton compatibility system. Someday soon steamVR will hopefully have good compatibility and I will give it a go. However I will always at minimum be stuck with windows on a secondary ssd as I have some Oculus games I also like and Oculus+revive will likely never work under Linux.
Where do I get the keyboard as a part from? I bought a keyboard from a seemingly branded seller on Aliexpress and the keyboard was really shit. The spacebar didn't balance at the edges and all the key felt mushy.
I also bought a battery from iFixit and got two warranty replacements and not a single one lasted more than a few hours before bricking itself. As in the battery still measured a voltage and it could keep the ram contents in sleep but the controller/battery info no longer showed up in macOS.
I can do these repairs as difficult as they are but where do I actually get the parts from?
I suppose I hadn't considered nor know much about slideloaded solutions as my previous phone was an iPhone 5c. It was a handmedown from my parents.
I don't really like the lack of hardware support on the Android side (parts availability). Not exactly like it's much better on the iPhone side either. So I went with the PinePhone. Linux on there is very barebones but at least the parts are available. If I am going to use my phone in a barebones manner then why buy in to an expensive fixed life device?
Not exactly a knowledgeable user. Just another user frustrated by the subscription/throwaway economy. I realize this wasn't really a relevant answer to your question but more how I adapted to the worthless app store.
BTW, one of the few apps I did purchase was 1Password. $60 for the Mac app and $40 for the iOS app. So $100 all in all. Those ass hats switched to subscription only the very next version citing we need funds to further develop the security. That plus a couple other examples is why I gave up on paid proprietary software on both devices. I'm full force trying to find FOSS solutions instead. Not that many exist for mobile or even desktop as you have also discovered.
The answer is that app stores are designed to rake users over the coals for all the money they can. Part of the reason I have never made my phone the center of my computing. It's too expensive and crap of an experience. I have just always made a habit of carrying around my laptop almost everywhere. I have an old phone (now PinePhone) for calls, texts, music, basic web browsing and internet tethering for the laptop.
Have you considered the PinePhone (Pro)?
My major issue with copyright is how published works can have major cultural significance. How it can shift ideas and shape minds. But your not allowed to have some fun with on a personal level. How can it be the norm that the most important scientific knowledge and other culturally significant material is locked behind such restrictive measures. Essentially ensuring that middle class and especially poor people are locked out.
If you publish something, even if it's paid, you don't deserve such restrictive rights. You deserve to be compensated for your work but you don't deserve to make it into a extortion racket.
My view on your second point is if you have posted it publicly with no paywall, maybe you should still get some percentage revenue but you don't have a say in what it can be used. To place restrictions on what it can be used for when posting it publicly is academic as it's basically unenforceable.
We live in a society which revolves around the discovery and sharing of ideas. We are all entitled to a certain amount of the sharing of that information. That's the whole point. To have some business man who was in the right place at the right time create an extortion racket out of something culturally significant they almost certainly didn't create is wrong.
Sorry if this is all over the place. I'm writing this while tired.
All the AI race has done is surface the long standing issue of how broken copyright is for the online internet era. Artists should be compensated but trying to do that using the traditional model which was originally designed with physical, non infinitely copyable goods in mind is just asinine.
One such model could be to make the copyright owner automatically assigned by first upload on any platform that supports the API. An API provided and enforced by the US copyright office. A percentage of the end use case can be paid back as royalties. I haven't really thought out this model much further than this.
Machine learning is here to say and is a useful tool that can be used for good and evil things alike.
Steam is my dirty little secret when it come to my interest in open source. I believe that Valve will continue to hold it's long tradition of user first business as a private business with lord Gaben at the helm (yes I know he's mostly in the background at this point). I know that GOG exists however I really like steam forums, achievements, steam deck integration, steam link streaming and most importantly steamVR. Buying through GOG is going to massively impact my steamVR experience if you can even at all. steamVR compared to Oculus makes steamVR look like a very open platform. I hate Facebook with a passion for a variety of reasons so steamVR it is.
FOSS is a great tool/concept but at this time it doesn't apply to gaming and I don't really care to massively inconvenience my gaming experience for a small amount more of open source code. I say this as someone who daily drives a PinePhone, runs a Linux server with ZFS and is looking at a Framework laptop for my next laptop to run Linux on. Windows is still where gaming is at, especially for VR, and I don't care to try and fight to run close source games on an open source operating system. Seems like a waste of effort to me.