Thanks, I've never seen this fork mentioned before. This alone is compelling:

"Simplifying configuration: the location directive can define several matching expressions at once, which enables combining blocks with shared settings."

Also owned by a for-profit company who offers a pro version.

Gotta pay the bills somehow

Maybe a coop of sorts could be formed where they pull in funds from sponsorships. A non-profit maybe. Devs could "lease" themselves to corporate sponsors and work on the project + some percentage time towards features they need. Sponsored development..

IDK could be a way to do it, pay the bills and some, and also limit the negative impacts public business or VC funded growth startup.

That doesn't work. For example Apple, benefiting from FreeBSD Foundation's work, never gave back any single penny to them, never sponsored any project within the Foundation. 1 million a year would mean a world to the Foundation, and would be less than a rounding error in Apple balance sheet.