> You also lose out on a lot of would-be PRs.

I am more concerned about the sustainability of the projects as a whole than trying to optimize the number of potential random PRs.

> you're welcome to give it a try on your projects.

It's not exactly the same, but in a way I'm already doing that with Communick. I'm running one of the few Matrix and Fediverse services where members must pay to have access. Up until last week, I was giving 14 days as a free trial period and no deposit/confirmed subcription required. But now because of AI bots, I dropped it and I am collecting payment info before activating any account.

If I were playing the startup playbook, that would be insane. It's already crazy to try to charge something that people are used to get for free; my conversion rates are already low, requiring credit card info will make them even lower.

In the end of the day, I don't care. At first I was really hoping this would be something profitable, right now I just keep it running because I can. Even with the small number of users Ithe servers get, I get enough to cover the better part of operational costs, I get to sharpen my devops skills and have a test lab to learn what is that people really want (i.e, they are willing to pay to have solved) vs what people claim to be a problem.

All in all, the Communick instances are not going to win any popularity contest, but my servers have been up and running without major issues or drama for more than 6 years, and that's a lot more than I can say for all the other servers that have come and gone because the admins tried to play the numbers game.