That is common human behavior, not corruption of what would be 'good' behavior otherwise.
The only difference to academics is that normal people don't try to create a consistent theory. We merely pick from whatever is available in to our moralistic toolbox.
My point was that there's no need to think that big, initially. There's also money in story driven movies and shows, as Keyframe calls it. Disruption of passive entrainment structures is more likely to happen from below, not from above.
A simple answer would be 'social proof'. Mashable provides a TopTen list of the most watched shows. That's a good start but the site is too distracting for Average Joe, in my opinion.
Also, web series are too short for true passive entertainment. I guess what your communities would need is a sort of Google Adsense, so you could plug-in advertising to be able to produce longer streams.
That would at least provide you with some money. When one show hits it big, that'll make news, and more people would start looking for shows like that. More eyeballs, more advertising, better chances of another hit, more news, and there you go.
According to the analysis [1] from the Institute for International Film Financing [2], movies with budgets higher than 10 Mil. have a worse ratio of breaking-even: roughly 6 of 10 loose money based on box office alone vs. only 4 of 10 fail in the less than 10 Mil. category.
I agree that making movies is expensive, but we shouldn't fall prey to the availability heuristic.
To circumvent this, it might help to think about TV: What would it cost to produce original content for a 24/7 stream?
If Open Source software provides any clues, marketing is indeed a problem.
Consider 'Blair Witch Project' which cost US$ 35.000 to make, was sold for US$ 1.1 Mil., and then the company spend US$ 20-25 Mil. for marketing. And this was an awesome campaign.
"Open Water" cost US$ 500.000, was bought for US$ 2.5 Mil, and the company spend additional US$ 8 Mil. on distribution and advertising.
Yes, maybe you could sell one or two or maybe a hundred copies but hardly any more.
The more successful your fork, the more likely it's going to be packaged and distributed by the one of the top distributions for FREE. The higher your sales price, the more likely people will buy just one copy and share additional copies among themselves.
Now consider the costs: Changing the UI of GIMP seems to be no easy task, otherwise someone would have done it, already. People are complaing about the interface for the last ten years or so.
In other words: Yes, you may be able to make revenue by adding features to the GIMP, but you're unlikely to make a profit!
The only difference to academics is that normal people don't try to create a consistent theory. We merely pick from whatever is available in to our moralistic toolbox.