It would be excellent if he could get fully funded through Patreon. I chipped in a bit, and I don't even use it--looks like a cool approach, though. There have to be enough enthusiasts out there to pitch in enough cups of coffee to cover his dev time.
I'm not sure how much of a cut Patreon takes, but it seems like there would be better options out there for non-profit foss projects, no? Liberapay maybe?
Even though librapay doesn't take a cut, the providers they use do. Someone is taking a cut; I just try to make it smallest with the least-shitty company. :) But it's tough, as a buyer, to find ways to pay people. I really wish creators would have obvious tip jars, and there was a standard way to tag them in HTML so search engines could find them.