I don’t think that’s what they were going for. They said “ I'd be pissed if I had to pay $0.10 every time I turned a rachet” so the person turning the ratchet is the one paying. Who they pay to is unknown.
It isn’t clear if you are trying to improve the original poster’s analogy, come up with your own, or change something about mine.
But, regardless, my main point was that describing the software in terms of a ratchet is not very helpful because hardware and software are different types of things.
The ratchet isn't what's getting paid in the metaphor, it's the person turning it.
There's always a time-sink cost to a public project.
Anyway, there's definitely a public good argument to turn certain software projects into utilities.