I like the idea of donating money instead of tokens. I think django contributors are likely to know how to spend those tokens better than I might, as I am not a django core contributor.
Some projects ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46730504 ) are setting a norm to disclose AI usage. Another project simply decided to pause contributions from external parties ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46642012 ). Instead of accepting driveby pull requests, contributors have to show a proof of work by working with one of the other collaborators.
Another project has started to decline to let users directly open issues ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46460319 ).
There's definitely an aspect here where the commons or good will effort of collaborators is being infringed upon by external parties who are unintentionally attacking their time and attention with low quality submissions that are now cheaper than ever to generate. It may be necessary to move to a more private community model of collaboration ( https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CABaSBax-meEsC2013zKYJnC3ph... ).
edit: Also I applaud the debian project for their recent decision to defer and think harder about the nature of this problem. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47324087
Shameless plug: I wrote an essay a few weeks ago pushing this exact same thesis. https://essays.johnloeber.com/p/31-open-source-software-in-t...
Instead of people buying the tokens themselves, they should just donate the money to the core contributors and let those people decide how to spend on tokens.
I agree with the broarder thesis, although some people aren't buying more tokens for this and could just be using their existing plan's limits.
So people may be less likely to donate an extra amount beyond their "ai budget" to an OSS project for tokens. Large OSS projects are also likely to get free tokens from major providers anyway.
But I like the idea of crowdfunding specific features.
Or paying maintainers and contributors.