While this is nice in theory, there's a long road strewn with attempts at micropayments on the web. I see new ones every six months or so. (Here's a recent one: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqrvNoDE35lFDUv2enkaEKuo6ATBj9GmL)

This also dramatically misses the idea of how copyright and intellectual property work in many countries with regard to fair use doctrine. For short quotes and excerpts almost anyone anywhere can do this for free already. It's definitely nice and proper to credit the original, but as a society we already have norms for how to do this.

I would argue this was a mistake which we are now paying for structurally.

If Linux was licensed such that derivative profitable use payed equity to the contributors to Linux, than many more people would share in the profits of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Rackspace, and so many more. If you take Google as an example, the company earns ~4.5M$ in profit per employee, of course 80% of their infrastructure is free software. Now imagine that each project on github was wired up using microtransaction systems and a system for assigning equity to those who contribute to the source code. Then as for-profit use of the application generates microtransactions that revenue is split by the current equity distribution to the equity holders.

This distribution of revenue would allow for a hybrid between the open and distributed, also a more sovereign participation model of open source and the benefits of economic integration rather than simple exposure to economic exploitation.