Good point about the size of fees. However, I don’t mostly view the problem as the tech industry failing to fund open source.
I think that framing overly emphasizes an existing problem, which is the perception that OSS is sort of a charity. This misperception only reinforces the negative sense of entitlement that people have towards open source.
A couple of ways that the sense of entitlement manifests itself is the expectation that OSS should be free and, if money is involved, then it should be in the form of pay-what-you-want donations, or subscriptions, not tied to a specific exchange of value. The concept of funding can encompass this vagueness.
The word ‘Transactions’, I think, is a more precise and correct term, as it more clearly relates to desired and sustainable goal of a defined and measured exchange of value.
So instead of the issue being merely the providing of funding, rather, I see it as an issue with the open-source community not fully recognizing that it’s an industry in its own right.
This lack of awareness hampers its ability to participate effectively in the marketplace, including financial transactions to sustain itself.
On another note, I share your view that these fees are troublesome. While I agree that small fees can serve as proof of identity—verifying that the software indeed comes from the claimed source, which seems to be one main intent of signatures—I don’t understand why these fees have to be exorbitant.
It seems more like artificial price inflation, perhaps even a form of cartel behavior.