Hang in there man. You're going to be competing with me for the top spot on Patreon ;). I've been setting up the same style operation. Willing to live in car if I need to, the stuff I experienced in the workplace actually had me walk off my last two jobs ($150k range). For personal reasons I refuse to tolerate mistreatment, so I've 'dug my own grave' so to speak... although I really see light in this new economic model. Personally I'm shooting to form a B corporation.

I think you can do better on licensing. I'm doing AGPL, holding my power to individually licensee as necessary (with some pieces under more/fully permissive licenses where it makes sense--not cents :). I've got cool demos online, can track me down pretty easily. Indeed, studying all the Machiavellian stuff I can, given it's clearly being used at higher levels. I just want to be excellent to each other and make cool stuff, and eat.