Never done open source but always wanted to. Developers of open source could always ask for a fee to add features, and easy prs are easy prs. But for those more complicated things that don't interest the main owners, could they offer a PR service where if you pay the developers or the project a fee, they'll take the time to review the PR and tell you what to do for it to be accepted, or keep a 5$ review fee and return the rest if it's just not a feature that jives with the project's overarching goals. I don't see why that cannot be a piece of the market. It would still be open source but it would add incentive to say a project is worth doing.
Albeit I'm sure that most would likely not be willing to pay to have their code reviewed and accepted in a project; but on another hand, if I wanted to contribute to GNUCash and I didn't want to read the manual, or I found the manual hard to understand, it would be like paying for training. So it can in certain cases be win-win.
And if it is a feature that is wanted, then there's no worry about it being reviewed. Or having to pay because the value will be obvious to the creators who will take it on.
In other words: Pay the developer/maintainer to care about the feature you want.
Phabricator had its task tracker open to everyone, but the company behind it would charge for prioritization of tasks being tackled. If you want your bug fixed or feature implemented before whatever else is on the maintainer's inherent priority list, pay up. IIRC, they also did all development in-house without accepting merge requests from the outside, but I may misremember.
It's unclear how successful they were with this. Phabricator lasted for about a decade before announcing the end of its development, not all of which was as a stand-alone company. The announcement didn't say why they stopped.
Developers of open source could always ask for a fee to add features
or ask for a donation. i am maintaining this in my free time. unfortunately i also need to work for a living. if you can contribute something then i'll have more time to work on this. if you need an invoice, i can provide you with one.
i am actually working on a project right now where i want to do this.
Albeit I'm sure that most would likely not be willing to pay to have their code reviewed and accepted in a project; but on another hand, if I wanted to contribute to GNUCash and I didn't want to read the manual, or I found the manual hard to understand, it would be like paying for training. So it can in certain cases be win-win.
And if it is a feature that is wanted, then there's no worry about it being reviewed. Or having to pay because the value will be obvious to the creators who will take it on.
In other words: Pay the developer/maintainer to care about the feature you want.
Has this ever been attempted and successful?