Wrong solution to the wrong problem

I agree that the point of free software was that people freely donate the fruits of their labor because they enjoy their labor. When it was just a bunch of hobbyists building things for the joy of it that worked very well. But now we're in a world where almost everyone depends (directly or indirectly) on these projects. They are essentially public goods (in the economists' sense of the word). Public goods are traditionally (in capitalist societies) paid for out of taxes.

This leads to two problems: Who should collect the taxes (and The Open Source Pledge is one proposal), and who should get paid. My (very few, very small) contributions were made when I was working for a company that occasionally used open source programs, and I contributed fixes which made my job easier. That was the ethos of the time. If that code is still in use, who, if anyone should be paid? Me, my employer, or nobody, on the grounds that I got far more benefit than I contributed?

Getting paid normally means accepting certain responsibilities. What responsibilities does an open-source coder or maintainer accept if he/she gets paid? To make changes that would benefit the group paying? To accept liability if the code causes damage?

We are trying to take a method of work which was set up by hobbyists for hobbyists and change it to support a system that most of the world runs on. Can this be done incrementally? If not, is there the will to install a major re-design?

--David