The economics of the software everyone depends on and nobody pays for — the new compute bill, the funding gap, and what to do about both.
Open source used to cost maintainers their time. It still does — but a second bill has arrived, paid in compute: AI coding agents, inference, the works. Here's the real math, and why the funding model hasn't caught up.
A clear-eyed look at how open-source funding actually works today — subscriptions, tips, grants — and the specific gap none of them was built to fill: the compute bill.
A practical guide: turn one link into inference credit your readers fund — where to put it, what a tip actually becomes, and how the money reaches you as spendable compute.