Making Money with an Open Source RPG

Every time I find some interview with an RPG creator, I notice some trickery, or perhaps confusion. The presenter brings up a question about how they make their RPGs, and the answer explains how they make money. There's nothing wrong with having a job, but how a woodcarver carves wood isn't the same as how they market their carvings. And the question of 'will this make money?', has nothing to do with 'how do we make a kick-ass RPG?'.

Irksome questions aside, I have been wondering how cash could be handled with an open source RPG. The possibilities seem limited:

• One of the writers starts a crowdfunding campaign to pay for art.
• A random non-writer starts a crowdfunding campaign to pay for art.
• Artists naturally throw in their own art, once the project becomes popular enough to get the attention of enough artists.

Within the first two models, we know how the artists get paid: 'up front', as always. It's entirely unclear how the people working on the book might be paid, and any attempt to 'create incentives' threatens to make a complete mess, at least as much as any other open source endeavour.

Currently, my best guess at the best 'incentives' is to keep all cash transparent, and spend all of it on artists.