Further on Point 3 made by @cglusky … I use Perch for some projects and I just remembered they had a “registered developer” scheme where you have to pay an annual fee to be listed…
The Perch Registered Developer programme is open to any individual freelancer or company who develops sites using Perch. Our aim is to promote companies who use Perch and also to provide a listing for people who are looking for someone to build a site or Perch add-on. In this way we hope the network will be beneficial to the members but also to the entire community.
In this instance, donations are like crowd-sourcing.
It is intended for capital / start-up costs, NOT as a perpetual revenue stream.
Once a project starts maturing, a number of additional income options become available, including a “freemium” type offering of paid priority support.
But you have to consider your competition in the market place.
Why would someone take the chance of switching over to you if your value proposition is not significantly different AND they have to pay more? They would probably stick it out with Gutenberg.
At this point, a project like this are still trying to convince devs (both core and plugin) to come on board. I just don’t see it as realistic that they would pay for the privilege currently.
Also, as a side note, devs don’t necessarily make the best support agents for end users.
There is a reason why WP has a small army of H Engineers.
To make a model like that work, you need at least a few people who are customer care consultants by nature.
Or rather, sales people, because from what I have read, the H Engineer job description is mainly to upsell.
Not that there is something inherently wrong with that. Devs are generally just not the best people to do it.