Breaks my heart to see such devoted developers having so much trouble paying bills for the work they've done.
I truly believe that this problem can be solved-by crowdfunding open source developments that rivals commercial status quo, we can decouple ourselves from restrictive licensing structures while paying people's bills for those who contribute to the development.
Imagine if Octave just got $3000 USD / month, that should help with basic costs of living (not knowing where the original author is) and also incentivize continued development-25 years of unpaid work is a tragedy.
I still have not figured out all angles but this is my dream. To help open source developers get paid and the work that becomes BSD or MIT licensed will offer a strong alternative to commercial softwares.
I'm wondering if anybody else shares similar vision, please subscribe at http://letsopensource.com or feel free to reach out at my email in my profile.