Issuing shares to the public (that is to say, not to a restricted group of sophisticated investors) is far more difficult and expensive than just taking donations.
Here in Australia a proprietary company can't take investment from (or even offer the opportunity to) more than 20 people in a 12 month period, can't have more than 50 non-employee shareholders, and the people you make the offer to have to be classified as "sophisticated" investors (which is a specific term that basically boils down to having a lot of money and thus probably not being naive to the way investments work.)
If you exceed those thresholds then you have to register a prospectus with the Australian Securities and Investment Commission and there are mountains of guidelines, laws, and red tape to wade through to meet all the criteria in the Corporations Act.
It would be far better for OS projects to sell upgrades to their software (to avoid having the complications surrounding donations) for a nominal fee, even if the upgrade is open source as well. The motivation to pay for the upgrade would be to keep the project alive rather than get the benefit of the upgrade.
It's like reddit gold, it doesn't do anything I can't already do with reddit enhancement suite for free, but I renew my gold subscription every year because I appreciate reddit and want to see it continue (Eternal September aside.)
Here in Australia a proprietary company can't take investment from (or even offer the opportunity to) more than 20 people in a 12 month period, can't have more than 50 non-employee shareholders, and the people you make the offer to have to be classified as "sophisticated" investors (which is a specific term that basically boils down to having a lot of money and thus probably not being naive to the way investments work.)
If you exceed those thresholds then you have to register a prospectus with the Australian Securities and Investment Commission and there are mountains of guidelines, laws, and red tape to wade through to meet all the criteria in the Corporations Act.
It would be far better for OS projects to sell upgrades to their software (to avoid having the complications surrounding donations) for a nominal fee, even if the upgrade is open source as well. The motivation to pay for the upgrade would be to keep the project alive rather than get the benefit of the upgrade.
It's like reddit gold, it doesn't do anything I can't already do with reddit enhancement suite for free, but I renew my gold subscription every year because I appreciate reddit and want to see it continue (Eternal September aside.)