Of course there's room to adapt as things evolve, yes.
The immediate challenge is that most projects are severely underfunded.
Anyway, I still would be less likely to donate to a project if the effect was "I donate $5, and the project only gets $1 extra, and I'm freeing up $4 of other patrons' money so it can go to other projects." That's worse for my goal of wanting this project to succeed than plain unilateral donations. If I want a project to succeed, I'd rather send them my entire $5 with a simple Paypal option than to do that screwy thing where others give less. Your version does mean, "others give less [to the project I support] when I donate." And that would make people want to skip that system and just donate unilaterally.
It's actually far better for the overall ecosystem if popular projects actually get adequate funding and less popular ones die than for all the funding to be split among all the projects regardless of popularity or worthiness. Yes that's two extremes. The ideal may not be either extreme.
Think of it this way: It would be way better to have two or three GNU/Linux distros that got enough support to completely outdo Mac and Windows in every respect than to have every GNU/Linux distro out there get an extra $100 a month. It's perfectly reasonable to argue that it's basically negative for GNU/Linux that there are so many distros and confusion. Consolidating the community and the funding around the most deserving projects is a positive effect.
That said, the goal is that if people want to support the popular projects and many others, they should add more funds, and up their overall budget when they see the value. People wont' keep to an absolutely fixed budget for the system. I might put in $100 at first, but if I knew the rest of the world would truly join me to build a truly better entire world, I'd put in my life savings. So, there are real limits, but don't assume this has to be a zero-sum game.
The immediate challenge is that most projects are severely underfunded.
Anyway, I still would be less likely to donate to a project if the effect was "I donate $5, and the project only gets $1 extra, and I'm freeing up $4 of other patrons' money so it can go to other projects." That's worse for my goal of wanting this project to succeed than plain unilateral donations. If I want a project to succeed, I'd rather send them my entire $5 with a simple Paypal option than to do that screwy thing where others give less. Your version does mean, "others give less [to the project I support] when I donate." And that would make people want to skip that system and just donate unilaterally.
It's actually far better for the overall ecosystem if popular projects actually get adequate funding and less popular ones die than for all the funding to be split among all the projects regardless of popularity or worthiness. Yes that's two extremes. The ideal may not be either extreme.
Think of it this way: It would be way better to have two or three GNU/Linux distros that got enough support to completely outdo Mac and Windows in every respect than to have every GNU/Linux distro out there get an extra $100 a month. It's perfectly reasonable to argue that it's basically negative for GNU/Linux that there are so many distros and confusion. Consolidating the community and the funding around the most deserving projects is a positive effect.
That said, the goal is that if people want to support the popular projects and many others, they should add more funds, and up their overall budget when they see the value. People wont' keep to an absolutely fixed budget for the system. I might put in $100 at first, but if I knew the rest of the world would truly join me to build a truly better entire world, I'd put in my life savings. So, there are real limits, but don't assume this has to be a zero-sum game.