What alternatives do people have to monetize software in a more ethical way?
I particularly don't understand the funding that some software receive. What they have to grant to receive those funds?
I also search for some type of monetization "model" better than donations, but more ethical than ads.
If it's too much to explain I would be grateful for terms or books that I could search later.
Paid builds. You get Access to the source code but you can either build yourself or pay a small amount to have a packaged built and updated whenever.
I also like the twice a year nag screen thunderbird or Wikipedia uses (KDE was right to start doing it too, in my books).
I don't believe a small donate button in the "about" section of the settings screen is of any use.
Some projects try to use a funding bar, that is shown to the user, when the funding is in risk the users know and donate more. The nag screen is effective, but if you are a donor already it can become somewhat annoying.
Yeah any nag screen needs to be disabled for at least a period of time after a donation (permanently, or replaced with a quick thank you screen for ongoing contributions).
Clearly reporting finances and costs is nice to see too and makes it more compelling for contribute in my opinion. A few Lemmy instances are doing that now and it makes it easy to want to contribute if you can.