> It looks a bit similar to the RedHat model

Yes, very good recognition. The Open Source Maintenance Fee follows several of the paths RedHat paved long ago.

> This may give CTOs an easy way to expense such support

I'm finding it actually gives the CTOs (or someone a bit lower in the chain) the _requirement_ to pay like they always wanted to before. Said another way, in the past, many devs/leads/managers would say, "Oh, I'd like to sponsor this project but I can't get through procurement." With the OSMF, now they have the forcing function to help them through. This is not hypothetical, I've had companies tell me exactly this.

> becoming a GitHub sponsor is more involved than many would like;

GitHub Sponsors is great... except for a few very real cases where it is not. This is on my radar to improve over time.