[zeagle]

That sounds a lot like a newspaper subscription. I subscribe to my local (physical) paper once a week for this reason.

[nerdponx]

Modern-day patronage is kind of different from a subscription. It's a lot like a "pay what you want" subscription model, but people seem a lot more generous when you express it as a "donation with early access to premium articles" rather than payment for goods and services.

[zeagle]

That's really fair. I think of my donations and support and usually higher than I would want to subscribe for!

[embedding-shape]

Yeah, as long as you remove the "for-profit" part, it's essentially that. Once it's a for-profit business, it perverses the incentives, and it'll be a race to the bottom or a race to see what subscribers can survive the highest prices, which is exactly what we wanna avoid :)

[ecshafer]

Non-profits don't really stop any of that. Plenty of non-profits are after perverse incentives to gather as much money as they can to just pay higher ups more money, and use the non-profit status to pay employees less.

[philipallstar]

You just find the optimal point for the most people if it's for profit.