If we offer ARC for anything else than free for non-commercial use, people will still pirate it. People won't pay even those $5, that's how people are. And if we charge non-commercial projects per release instead of a ARC usage license, it's almost impossible to keep track of all games that are released non-commercially. As you said, nobody of us got into this to earn money but rather to make an RM that blows Enterbrain out of the water. I am against any charge for non-commercial projects and for free usage of ARC without limitations unrelated to releasing a game.
People are bitching just for the sake of it. If somebody is being a dick, ask them if they want to make a commercial project. On any other answer than a 100% yes you can reply with "Then what's your problem? It's not like you have to pay if you aren't going to use it commercially." If they say that it's too expensive, tell them "You are not paying it. Why do you care?" and if they come back with something in the line of other people might this and that, blablabla, you just say "That's their problem, isn't it? You don't have to pay anything. I don't understand why you are upset that you don't have to pay anything.".
Even if they bitch about maybe selling it commercially, you can just say "Then you will MAYBE pay $400." You can even say "You don't have to pay until the very release of the game. If the projects gets canceled, you are taking no risk and don't have to pay anything."
If we make a poll, most people will vote even for free of charge either way. The ironic thing is that people who will never make a commercial game or aren't even thinking about making a commercial game will vote for the commercial license to be free. Basically we can't rely on a poll.
The only alternative that I see is to offer it for $200. In that case I we should offer it for $400 initially and make it %50 off for a "limited time" where "limited time" is not specified how long and we just keep the price there. Basically we are giving it for $200, but we're making people believe that it's on discount.
This model prevents pirating and makes ARC available to everyone.
The only variable we have here is the price for releasing a commercial game. And charging anything less than $200 is pointless. $200 is not much money. Even $400 is not that much money, but it's a pain threshold to keep out people with low quality games. People will always be bitching, we have to accept that. Besides, if we gave it all away for free, people wouldn't take it so seriously because it's "free". People will be bitching either way.