You have articulated well the trade-off between "project first" and "business first". From a user point of view, project first is the only thing that matters.

You have articulated well the trade-off between "project first" and "business first". From a user point of view, project first is the only thing that matters. There is an instinctive resistance to anything that gets in the way. On the other hand users generally don't care about the project authors getting paid or not. From the author side, getting paid is often a goal. If that means limiting the community to paying users, then so be it. From their perspective they are offering value, and they choose to spend their time focused on users who are paying. In other words they need your money, not your code suggestions. They can code, but code doesn't pay rent. As you say, others can choose to silo their changes, and not post them back, that is their right, and indeed likely happens anyway.