Patreon/LiberaPay style individual sponsorship should be a simple path around this. If I am sponsoring an individual because I like the work they do in general, I am not contributing towards a single “project”. Especially if the dev contributes to more than one project. The wider the grey area the better.

Perhaps the future is shadowy projects led by an anonymous figure who merely merges pull requests, while named devs contribute work and receive support from their fans/supporters.