The notion of charging people to be part of the community seems like a terrific way to immediately kill any semblance of community.
Realistically, the only people who will pay a membership fee are those who can charge it to a company. That means you'll lose all the people hacking on the project in their free time.
Personally, I contributed a lot more to open source when I was in college and had more free time than money. There's no way I would have paid to be able to contribute.
The solution is really just to have lower expectations on maintainers, both around timely responses/support (want fast support, pay for it) and improvements. They can and should also be more liberal with adding maintainers.
No. The community around a business is their customers who dont contribute directly to the product itself, but to the general economy, knowledge and hype around it. You pay to buy the product and probably wouldnt work on it in behalf of the producer for free on your free time.
Realistically, the only people who will pay a membership fee are those who can charge it to a company. That means you'll lose all the people hacking on the project in their free time.
Personally, I contributed a lot more to open source when I was in college and had more free time than money. There's no way I would have paid to be able to contribute.
The solution is really just to have lower expectations on maintainers, both around timely responses/support (want fast support, pay for it) and improvements. They can and should also be more liberal with adding maintainers.