The tracking app would be pretty simple. A shim in the shell that tracks the first argument on the command line and increments a counter. Then usage stats are pushed to the service every 24 hours (or something like that).

app usage / all tracked app usage --> donation to app.

Handling the payments portion would be... nightmarish?

With crypto it would be really easy. I'd be tempted to take cash on the frontend, convert to crypto, split, then reconvert to cash and make payouts.

How do we handle registering apps that you use? What about upstream dependencies? Example: you just spun up a new React project, do we target all deps on that project? Is this only for command line? What about cron jobs, or systemd? Or that systemd service script you copied from a gist somewhere?

I wonder if some weird kind of aggregation could go on.

At the end of the month, I'm told to donate my entire $10 to some obscure tool I've never even heard of.

The system did all of the tracking, across all users, and then figured out how to assign users like me to projects, such that I'm only donating once or twice ($6 to this project, and $4 to that project.)

The system I propose does all of the counting, all of the aggregating, matching intended donations to the recipients, and then encourages me to do my actual gifting...

Seems possible, but weird. Or maybe we need to set up a non-profit to do all this money laundering^W^W donating.