Not sure I’ve got the idea properly, but if so, I agree. I think offering help with self-hosting may generate decent income for a developer. Plus, give them insight into their users.

E.g. I have this idea to develop a set of neat Immich servers for friends (for free, but they buy needed hardware, say, Mac mini or something similar). As an extension of this idea, sell pre-made Immich-ready servers for general public, with the initial setup and extra support being paid. Including the donation to the original project off the money, if their licence allows selling the support. I expect it is, but haven’t investigated that further. Treat this as an example of the idea.

Obviously, this model would work for your own software. Perhaps, that’s not the fuck-you-money you can get with this, but still that may be more than open source projects get via the shallow donations that they usually get.

I have some ideas for some for-me software, which can live on any computer. So I think of deploying a fleet of SBC (Raspberry / Orange Pi or alike) servers to gift to friends, with bunch of neat services there, like Pi-Hole, etc. Plus some of made by me software, if I think the particular friend may have a use for it. The extension of this idea might be the broader audience. Won’t likely to be millions of users, but still. And who knows, one day … perhaps.