Author's project is a command line productivity tool. I have co-authored a now-archived command line productivity tool with half the number of stars (6-7k, maybe worth more today due to inflation) in the past, and my observation is people are generally very stingy with this type of projects. We did make people's lives a little bit better, but unlike frameworks, libraries, etc., it's not going to end up in any money-making product, so people don't think it's essential (it's not), and companies which tend to donate larger sums than individuals are completely out of scope. I think the total donation (through a PayPal link in README) we got over more than half a decade was less than $100. In comparison, I once made some web-based analytic tools when playing a casual mobile game, and got a few thousand in donations over a year or two -- not much considering the time that went into it, but two orders of magnitude better than the command line productivity tool.
However, we hardly ever marketed our project and never tried to "build a following" or beg for donations in any way, so maybe the author will do a lot better than us. The server component should also help remind people it's not free.
Edit: One thing I forgot: I think command line utilities are in a worse financial position than GUI utilities, because people are accustomed to paying for GUI apps, but aren’t accustomed to paying for things in the shell at all.
>I think command line utilities are in a worse financial position than GUI utilities, because people are accustomed to paying for GUI apps, but aren’t accustomed to paying for things in the shell at all.
I think that's because command line tools are more appealing to technical people. For convenience sake and ease of use, most average computer users will use GUI tools or applications.
I'm specifically talking about developer utilities. Even developers are accustomed to paying for GUI apps but not command line stuff. To be fair I've never seen anyone selling a local (non-SaaS) command line only tool either.
However, we hardly ever marketed our project and never tried to "build a following" or beg for donations in any way, so maybe the author will do a lot better than us. The server component should also help remind people it's not free.
Edit: One thing I forgot: I think command line utilities are in a worse financial position than GUI utilities, because people are accustomed to paying for GUI apps, but aren’t accustomed to paying for things in the shell at all.