One thing I've thought about is a sort of "crowdfunded patronage" model, where the creator of a work declares upfront how much money they want to make off of it

One thing I've thought about is a sort of "crowdfunded patronage" model, where the creator of a work declares upfront how much money they want to make off of it, and releases it into the public domain once they've received that much money. That's a ransom model. It's one of several [existing mechanisms] for funding free/libre/open (FLO) works… none of which appreciably move the needle on making a living off them. I've spent a lot of time talking about Snowdrift.coop on HN recently so I'll skip the pitch this time and just link our [wiki], which has a suggested reading order front-and-center; I'm happy to join in follow-up discussion. [existing mechanisms]: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/existing-mechanisms#fn2 https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/existing-mechanisms#fn2 [wiki]: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/ https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/