I think the part of this that's weird to me, is that non-paying users are able to open issues or pull requests at all. Something about it feels very passive agg

I think the part of this that's weird to me, is that non-paying users are able to open issues or pull requests at all. Something about it feels very passive aggressive. Why not just have the public facing project be a fork of a private, access protected project where bug tracking and PRs are handled, that only patrons can access? For some reason, saying "only patrons can access our development repo" seems perfectly reasonable, but saying "we'll close your bug report if you don't pay us" feels a bit grumpy.