I doubt he wants money, he wants appreciation for the hard work he does. For years he was the only realistic way to get videos to play on debian.
Instead he gets insults ("your packages harm users"), when actually his packages help users. And now, finally years later, debian got some multimedia programs into debian, and they want him to go away.
Not really the right way to treat someone who made your distribution useful for a whole class of people for years.
And his packages help users even more if he can get his changes into Debian or (even better) upstream. Forking is sometimes unavoidable but it's never ideal. I think the maintainer is just trying to maintain his fiefdom otherwise you'd see him petitioning Debian and upstream with pulls.
These software projects are just as much about social relationships and sharing as they are about code. That's why I see the maintainer's actions as petty, even if you're insulted by the DDs it's never worth it to stoop to a petty level.
"And his packages help users even more if he can get his changes into Debian or (even better) upstream."
Some of his packages (AFAICT) are built from upstream sources, but configured to include capabilities that the debian folk won't or can't build into theirs, like mplayer.
Others are packages excluded from debian entirely for these reasons, like libdvdcss.
The maintainer is providing the user who doesn't care about, or who is not in a jurisdiction where they have to care about it, a whole bunch of codecs and capabilities that the base distro doesn't and will not include.
Instead he gets insults ("your packages harm users"), when actually his packages help users. And now, finally years later, debian got some multimedia programs into debian, and they want him to go away.
Not really the right way to treat someone who made your distribution useful for a whole class of people for years.