[waplot]

I've seen the pay-for-binaries model in a few places. Not sure if it's scalable since someone can write a build script and share it with the community.

[gmemstr]

It depends -- with a community build script, you're relying on (and trusting!) a third party to maintain it and not do anything malicious. Much easier to pay a few bucks for first party binaries. At least in my eyes.

[Gigachad]

This is how every distro repo works and likely where you would get that binary from.

[dikei]

In Windows, people willingly download shady binary from piracy sites all the time to avoid paying for software.

I think you underestimate the incentive of free (beer) stuffs.