Talking about baby steps, things are really moving in the right direction at the French national library (BnF): few people have noticed, but now images from the Gallica portal are royalty-free for any non-commercial use. I don' think the news is very widespread, but just go on Gallica, look for instance for a digitized manuscript (example "Latin 12584"), choose any folio and click on "télécharger / imprimer" (download / print), and you'll find a link to the non-commercial and commercial use policies. Best regards, Marjorie