> The exact moment you charge for something, you need payment processing, a bank, a legal entity to hold said processed funds, you have liability, you need some sort of marketing / sales process (even if it's just copy on a website),

That seems like an area that's ripe for innovation. What does it take to get setup on a platform like Patreon? Seems like something similar ought to be setup for open source/independent development, probably an idealistic nonprofit.

> and the barrier for someone to use your product is suddenly extremely high, simply because it costs something.

All the organizations who really ought to pay are already setup to do all that, and do it all the time.

> But the core reason why FOSS spreads and took over is precisely why it is difficult to fund. No one is going to pay for something when the alternative is free. And the moment you start to charge some free alternative comes along and your prior users spurn you as greedy

What we need is innovation. Maybe a license that has a trip-wire? If not enough money is voluntarily deposited into a tip jar over a certain period of time, the license requires a modest payment from all for-profit organizations of a particular size.

That's up-front, is for the most part free, and incentivizes some payment.