The same kind of returns that power research academia, where the amount of money you make is determined by the number of citations on your papers.

Except it's on Github and it's forks and starts.

I upvoted your comment.

Also, it's a scarcity mindset.

I don't agree that sibling to my comment: "make money by getting papers cited". it is not a long-term solution, much as Ad revenue is broken model for free software, also.

I'm hopeful that we see some vibe-coders get some products out that make money, and then pay to support the system they rely on for creating/maintaining their code.

Not sure what else to hope for, in terms of maintaining the public goods.

Any "exposure" economy has real money somewhere else turning the wheel. If that money isn't sensitive to healthy signal, neither is the downstream. Well-wishers are just alternative perpetual motion machine enthusiasts.