> [..] if these projects all integrated LLMs into their chatbots for just a few bucks [..]
No matter your position on the AI helpfulness, asking volunteers to not only spend time helping support a free software project but to also pony up money is just doubling down on the burden free software maintainers face as was highlighted in the recent libxml2 discussion.
A lot of the projects that maintain Discord servers in my experience will receive plenty enough donations to make up for the $5 it'd take to serve the traffic that hits their Discord for help with AI. Yes I did run the numbers. It's so (intentionally) cheap, this is a non-issue.
But then one could also just argue that this is something the individual projects can decide for themselves. Not really for either of us to make this call. You can consider what I said as just an example you disagree with in that case.
No matter your position on the AI helpfulness, asking volunteers to not only spend time helping support a free software project but to also pony up money is just doubling down on the burden free software maintainers face as was highlighted in the recent libxml2 discussion.