But locally, dollars are a zero-sum game. Your dollars came from someone else. If you make a project better for yourself without making it better for others you can possibly one-up others and make more dollars with it. If you make it better for everyone that's not necessarily the case. You're just diluting your money and soon enough you won't have money and you're eliminated from the race.

While I'd like to believe in the decency and generosity of humans, I don't get the economic case of donating money to the agent behind an OS project, when the person could spend the money on the tokens locally themselves and reap the exclusive reward. If it really is just about money that only makes sense.

Obviously this is a gross oversimplification, but I don't think you can ignore the rational economics of this, since in capitalism your dollars are earned through competition.

Would be cool if you could donate to maintainer's favourite bot to get bugs fixed.

Usually, getting stuff fixed on main is better than being forced to maintain a private fork.