The question of how to fund such ventures is more interesting.
Programmers often get funded by grants to write free-libre software, at least in an academic context. Cultural artists get funded the same way to some extent, though I get the impression that this was more the case in the US a decade or two ago. By all accounts it's easier to live by this in part of Europe (Germany comes to mind). How does this work?
The Sovs and their satellites tended to make being an artist a paid profession, right? You applied, you might get accepted, and if you did, you didn't have to work at whatever you were doing to avoid punishment for parasitism. It introduces problems of self-censorship, but privately funded art seems little different to me. Does anybody know how this system was set up?
-- Andy