I'm not sure about this. On one hand the idea sounds good on the other it raises lots of questions. For example, who will decide who is a "worthy load bearer"? Then once people are funded who will manage their workloads?

Also, I'm dubious the whole thing is actually needed in the first place. No examples of "load bearers needing funding" were given. DNS was mentioned, but what part of it exactly? Root TLDs are doing pretty well financially from what I heard by selling all the sub domains in their TLDs, so what are we talking about exactly reverse DNS? Things like .org or edu? These are funded by governments.

Network wise we have telcos paying for sub sea cables, Internet exchanges like the one in London are self funded (by connection fees). Routing is managed by same telcos and IXs.

What are these individual "Internet Load Bearers" that keep the entire Internet afloat without making a dime from it? Usenet admins? I might have paid to keep Usenet alive, but Google bought it all, didn't they?

I am surprised to see this show up again. The idea was ahead of its time, and sank without a trace. Since then, (and during) multiple orgs have attempted to also put some sort of floor below various maintainers. I see these finally beginning to succeed in some places, although I still struggle on a combination of patreon donations and the occasional grant, for what I do. Simon is semi-retired now but I think dnsmasq is mostly out of trouble. I can think of many others still struggling in obscurity.

Eric himself, had a bout with stomach cancer, and has mostly withdrawn from the web, tired of the perpetual onslaught and criticism. He´s been working on a new book, for a very long time. IMHO he was the right person at the right time, to get open source into the mainstream, and although many might disagree with him, and his politics, I think his contribution to internet history is assured.

ESR´s most recent project was ntpsec.org, which vastly reduced the attack surface of ntp. Another key one used in many places, and needed less now, was reposurgeon: http://www.catb.org/esr/reposurgeon/repository-editing.html

FYI there is a company called Tidelift that funds essential infrastructure project maintainers using subscriptions by companies that depend on them and information about dependencies that the subscribers provide.

In my experience, Tidelift has provided the most consistent and meaningful support to maintainers I know, and based on that experience I trust their model and judgment more than ESR's.

The Linux Foundation used to have a project to do this (Core Infrastructure Initiative), but it looks like they closed it down in 2021. Not sure if the LF is the right sort of organization for this.

But I'm very sure that ESR's involvement is the kiss of death for something like this.

I know that ESR considers himself to be an “LBIP”. Not really convinced that the claim has merit…

There's also Germany's Sovereign Tech Fund, which was set up with a similar goal. It funds curl, for example.

https://sovereigntechfund.de/en/

Also note http://www.catb.org/esr/loadsharers/ as ESR's initial list of proposed loadbearers; he additionally links to Dave Täht's loadsharer page: http://flent-fremont.bufferbloat.net/~d/lbip/

ESR: Opposes communism and all things left with McCarthy-esque fervor.

Also ESR: Tries to reinvent Kropotkin's mutual aid from first principles.

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2347/

They should fund the libjpeg-turbo guy.

Essentially crowd-sourced Bellcore?