It can be. But you shouldn't expect it to be if you don't offer support, a product, etc... Lots of these recent threads are basically people who just release something into the wild, put no effort into monetizing and then wonder why they're not getting paid...

Yep, ok. I sorta feel that the 'lean financing' approach is to not add any monetization at all -- because it may introduce externalities -- until a project is producing significant value and has (necessary) infrastructure/runtime costs.

Roughly speaking: focus on producing something of value, and then the monetization strategy should follow naturally if the project succeeds.

At the same time, I think it's important to focus on reducing total cost of infrastructure, because doing that increases the size of the audience who can participate and reach a sustainable value threshold.

(and one caveat to that: long-term cost is often minimized thanks to high-quality, durable systems that often have high associated price points. it may be necessary to have entry-level alternatives available too, although I don't think that's an excuse for providing poor-quality systems, or for entrenching high price points on legacy trusted systems)