Is the idea that "foundational work" (in any field) can be done without "huge sacrifices" widely accepted? It sounds a tad unrealistic to me, unsupported by history. It's as if people want to have it both ways: Create innovative SW, but also don't take risks or make sacrifices. Offer software "for free" (and belligerently oppose even something like GPL), but also get paid (preferably by the government, so the people…
Who said people want to do "foundational work"? The just want to write some specific software they enjoy writing together. The question rather is: after said software has been proven valuable and widely used by companies, and when there remain some hard and/or non-enjoyable parts to be done to complete it/enhance it (specific drivers, documentation, advanced features, etc), why don't any of the users donate some mone…
In some cases, "paying extra" without being asked to might even be compromising your fiduciary duties.
I feel the open source movement has spoilt its "user base" a little. There's very little expectation of reciprocity. Sometimes even outright hostility toward OSS modes that try work with reciprocity (check out the linked HN thread above).
This mindset might be hard to reverse at this point. As with all "communal sharing" experiments, the true crunch time comes as the economic reality sets in.