I think companies will hop on board if it means saving engineering hours. OSS has monetary value to these businesses, enough to make a small subscription to support the tremendous development efforts behind it. In most projects, OSS makes up the majority of the codebase, so it is "big/important" IMO.
As for the legal aspect, permissive licensing like MIT/Apache 2.0 allows developers and consumers to distribute and use code pretty freely, which is what makes OSS so great and why GitRoyalty doesn't impose any other licensing.
One of the driving factors behind making GitRoyalty was the corporate mentality I've experienced where management will pay for whatever is necessary, but think twice before sponsoring anything (especially transitive projects).
As for the legal aspect, permissive licensing like MIT/Apache 2.0 allows developers and consumers to distribute and use code pretty freely, which is what makes OSS so great and why GitRoyalty doesn't impose any other licensing.
One of the driving factors behind making GitRoyalty was the corporate mentality I've experienced where management will pay for whatever is necessary, but think twice before sponsoring anything (especially transitive projects).