The naming situation here is like a monty python skit

This post is unfortunately quite misleading : OpenCollective is not shutting down! The news is just that the Open Collective Foundation, a fiscal host on the Open Collective Platform, is going to be dissolved and that collectives using this fiscal host will have to transfer their funds to another fiscal host.

Important: Do not confuse Open Collective Foundation with Open Source Collective: https://opencollective.com/opensource/updates/regarding-the-announcement-to-dissolve-open-collective-foundation

From Regarding the announcement to dissolve Open Collective Foundation:

Please be assured Open Source Collective is not affected and will continue to operate as usual. ... The similarity in our names stems from a common origin, as the founders of Open Source Collective were also involved in creating the fiscal hosts Open Collective Foundation and Open Collective Europe.

Mastodon.world's open collective fiscal host is Open Collective Europe. So it seems that would be fine?

Last day to accept funds/receive donations: March 15, 2024

Last day collectives can have employees: June 30, 2024

Last day to spend or transfer funds: September 30, 2024

Seems quite sudden especially when I can't really think of a lot of comparable websites projects could migrate to.

So just move to Open Source Collective. What even is Open Collective Foundation and why did they exist?

I'm even more confused. Links from oscollective.org point back to opencollective.com. 😵‍💫

Thats because one is the entire website and another is a fiscal host on that website. They both exist on the same website.

One is a square. One is a smaller circle inside the square.

So Patreon is the only workaround atm.