> If this was a commercial project, his income would be magnitudes higher.
If it was a commercial project I imagine there would likely need to be other staff involved, and adoption would be lesser. Whether that ends up being more or less money for him in specific in the end (or whether the project/company would survive) is not without question, in my mind.
The argument you make is quite popular. I'd say adoption would only be lower because there's competition that's also MIT licensed. And if that wasn't there, every framework author would be better off (e.g. in a public-private licensing scenario).
It will be hard to find evidence for both sides I guess. So it boils down to being kind of a gamble: adoption or fair compensation — you can't have both.
This looks like a race to the bottom to me, which is what the data presented in the article seems to support.
If it was a commercial project I imagine there would likely need to be other staff involved, and adoption would be lesser. Whether that ends up being more or less money for him in specific in the end (or whether the project/company would survive) is not without question, in my mind.