the underlying root cause of most supply chain attacks in this era seems to be expecting something of value in exchange of nothing.
Under such expectations some will volunteer to give value, but many more will volunteer to give something that looks like what you ask, but which extracts value instead.
I relate it to a recent poker strategy development which came from game theory, it turns out that you can play in an unexploitable manner, but it will usually result in ties, and lost time and money to rake, and theoretically any attempt to exploit another player, leaves you exploitable to another player. The classical example is rock paper scissors, unexploitable strategy is to play randomly with p=1/3 for each choice, however if one really wishes to win more often than their opponent, they have to guess, and if in that guessing they choose an option with 100% certainty, they become exploitable to someone choosing another option with 100% certainty.
In effect the very act of attempting to extract value from free software, is the very act that leaves one vulnerable to being extracted value from.
"the underlying root cause of most supply chain attacks in this era seems to be expecting something of value in exchange of nothing."
I do not think that someone's status as a contributor to open source mediates their safety from supply chain attacks. Big companies that donate gobs of money get hit, and so do small operators who have contributed nothing are just trying out a hobby project.
Okay, so we agree that everyone who uses open source is at risk, regardless if of they're a contributor.
But maybe we disagree about this other thing. I'm not certain that closed source/paid software is less of a risk either. There have been high profile incidents lately that suggest this is not a sufficient defense.
Personally I just think you're barking up the wrong tree with this pay/contribute=>reduced risk link. I don't think there's anything there. I will grant that you are at slightly less risk from software you know well and contribute to directly, but that's only of any help for very low level stuff that doesn't have many dependencies.
I thought it would be obvious that paying someone for their services would reduce the odds that they betray you, but it's apparently not so I'll check for some sources.
I'd look beyond software as it seems more of a general economic or political matter.
This would not apply to something as extreme as a supply chain incident, but if an OS library has multiple users, it can't serve all of them equally well. If one consumer throws a big donation, of course they will serve them better, potentially at the expense of others.
Source of the efficiency wage concept, more detailed and mathematical explanation. Shirking would be the term for a worker not working or working against their employer.
There is mention to the fact that not all contracts are perfect, and there's always some implicit terms, governed by reputation at least (like, say, the quality of the work will be good, or you won't plant a worm in the code). Also it is mentioned that the costs of monitoring perfect contracts would be too high (for example defining a system of story points and ensuring that the story points contributed are above a certain level, or auditing code and code changes to ensure there are no worms in the code), so an efficiency wage provides an incentive for the worker to self-police, potentially removing the cost of auditing.
Just think about what the contrary would imply, if paying workers didn't increase security, then a free worker writing code would be as secure as a paid worker writing code. In order to introduce security you'd have to introduce an external auditor, which can be free or paid. An auditor cannot introduce vulnerabilities, but they can shirk and get paid without doing the work, but you claim that a system with a free codewriter and a free auditor is more secure than a system with a paid codewriter and a paid auditor? I contend that a system without auditor and a paid codewriter is more secure. And it is even more secure if the worker is paid in excess of perfect market wages, potentially only based on incentives, but also due to the fact that their payment is conditional on job execution, depending on the contract type, if they are negligent on their job, you can recover at least their payment in court, and possibly additional damages.
Finally, I couldn't find sources on the discussions around the ends of 18th century when mandatory salaries for public officials where defined in constitutions of countries of the Americas, but it was my understanding that in most democracies public officials MUST be compensated, it is often justified that otherwise only wealthy classes would have access to such positions so this increases representation, but it's also possible that resistance to bribery and corruption is another reason most governments converge on this decision. The experiment cited supporting this correlation.
I'll add even more from anecdotal experience, sometimes prices can be too cheap, and this will dissuade buyers of the item, because we have an internal model of what cost structures are like, a price too cheap suggests underfunding or cheap materials. I can personally recount many examples where a sale was lost not because the price was too high, but because it was too low. And 0 is a number, which again might be too low. In this case the rule is not about security strictly, but about sale price being a signal of the investment in the quality of the contracted asset. Naturally the cost invested into the product cannot be lower than the price, excluding price dumping (which arguably are not deals you want to take), or lead lossing, so it's a necessary conclusion that low price signal low investment and thus quality, not only of the visible immediate product, but of less visible qualities like future commitment to the product, and less visible present qualities like hidden backdoors.
You sponsor every open source library you take a dependency on?
I grant that if you act as a significant source of funding to a given entity, that entity is less likely to hurt you, if it knows what your interests are. Of course, this is completely impractical for hobbyist users of open source software.
Under such expectations some will volunteer to give value, but many more will volunteer to give something that looks like what you ask, but which extracts value instead.
I relate it to a recent poker strategy development which came from game theory, it turns out that you can play in an unexploitable manner, but it will usually result in ties, and lost time and money to rake, and theoretically any attempt to exploit another player, leaves you exploitable to another player. The classical example is rock paper scissors, unexploitable strategy is to play randomly with p=1/3 for each choice, however if one really wishes to win more often than their opponent, they have to guess, and if in that guessing they choose an option with 100% certainty, they become exploitable to someone choosing another option with 100% certainty.
In effect the very act of attempting to extract value from free software, is the very act that leaves one vulnerable to being extracted value from.