I think hobbling the CP core will create a barrier to entry and will slow the adoption of CP. The project would be better off creating some premium plugins, maybe even premium core plugins, to generate some cashflow. These would be targeted at larger sites making it easy for startups to get started with CP and add functionality as they grow.
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the free system you have now can be manipulated. charitable orgs can also be heavily influenced by large donors. if you charge the same per member at least you have made it harder on large orgs to manipulate the system. add in real transparency and imo you have an OK system. not perfect, as no system is, but likely serviceable.
i think a more important flaw in my proposal would be that a large org only pays for one member to get access to premium support on a large number of sites. so it might work better to have people pay some number per year to be a voting member and then offer support at various levels as an up charge.
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This is really good feedback, but paying for opportunity to vote: really don’t like the sound of that
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I support a business model for the project, but, I’m hoping it’s not a replacement for donations. I don’t have a use for a support plan, but, I do make yearly donations to a variety of organizations. 
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I agree, this sounds too much like buying influence which is what has the appearance of having happened to WP. The important thing is to make sure it is CP users/stakeholders voting.
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You ARE paying to get to vote. That is my point. Your vote has value and CP should charge for it as a member owned and controlled cooperative. I think it is easier to sustain than a charitable org, and a better match for a B2B CMS. Just my .02.
Paying money to vote is an ANTI-democratic way of qualifying stakeholders, and I hope we never go that way. I would rather see ‘contribution’ be a qualifier, and that could be as simple as registering and participating in a discussion here on the forums, perhaps. Pretty sure money is not the only way of providing or measuring value (and I’m a capitalist).
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I’ve been working with WordPress since it came out and as much as dislike Gutencrap, it’s what my clients want. Most of the time it’s because there is a plug-in that exists for WordPress that meets their needs. WordPress has such a huge repository of plug-ins, you can typically find one for anything you need.
If I told my clients I’m going to be using ClassicPress, they would say what’s that and is the plug-in I want available for it.
So, I want this to succeed but I can’t risk my business moving to it until there is a much larger following.
For that reason, I’ve taken a wait and see approach. If I suddenly see it gaining momentum within the developer community, I’ll jump in with both feet.
In addition, if you start charging for this, then it’s doomed. It needs to be monetized in other ways.
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I agree with this point. It’s one thing to accept donations in support of a project, another to outright charge for the privilege of using it.
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I completely agree, that being said I do like “upgraded” support - but not charging for anything else.
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Monetisation should come in the form of “Premium Services” i.e. Cloud hosting, premium plugins and themes, email support by “happy engineers”.
If we have to pay for the privilege to vote then I’m out, I’d be happy to shelf my planned projects than participate in undemocratic processes!
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Of course.
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I have clearly confused a bunch of people. Sorry. I’ll wrap up my input below:
@raygulick Explicit and implicit rules for gaining/maintaining citizenship in a democracy are not new. E.g. Not being a felon supposes paying your taxes. I think you are viewing this as a public utility and I see (at least part of) it as a private service. I think we could both be right.
@azimpact @BlueSkyPhoenix I am not saying to charge for CP. It’s Open Source. None of that changes with what I proposed. You simply charge to be a voting member in order to fund the org and ensure members have equal voice. Could be just to vote on who gets to run the org/sit on the board, as in typical coops. Could also be the right to vote on dev priorities, which would make it closer to a direct rather than representative democracy. Really not sure if that has been tried as a coop in this context.
Hope my input has helped. I sense the direction this is taking, and hope it works out. Just don’t have time right now to get into the inner workings of another startup. Cheers!
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Maybe free for do-it-yourselfers but premium for people who want managed support? That might appeal to wordpress.com bloggers who don’t like Gutenberg but are scared of self-hosting.
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@cglusky paying to vote is not democracy. What happens if I don’t have the money to support? If votes are paid only a certain group of people will direct the project. This will end up with big entities trying to hack the project.
Instead I think offering a “plus” of aggregated services (adding value to the CMS) is the way to go.
For example custom plugin/theme development, technical assistance given from a vetted group of professionals on the job board, our own hosting/domain service… All of this revenue could be split in two. A part to ClassicPress and a part to the pro issuing the service itself.
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I disagree with this particular suggestion both in principle and in practice.
Paying to vote is explicitly incompatible with our current structure and rules, and our ethos of being first and foremost a free and open-source project. Please have a read through ClassicPress Governance | ClassicPress if you haven’t already.
As far as other suggestions like premium support, we are not making a decision on this yet either way. However, I can think of a few things that would be absolutely required before implementing such a program:
- Clearly defined contractual obligations on both sides. For support, what is in scope vs out of scope, etc.
- Someone to implement, execute and manage the program, including hiring, compensation, quality control, etc. Ideally this would be someone with previous experience running an online support team.
- Transparent governance that does not cause conflicts of interest with our existing goals and structures. This may be the most difficult part to do well.
Personally I’d also go for live chat support rather than email support. Our support forums already offer a much nicer support experience than anything we could do via email, and that’s free.
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what would the $100/yr get you as a user?
Slightly more than $0/year would get you.
You don’t want the $100 market. You want the $100k+ market.
You want The New Yorker, BBC America, Bloomberg, Variety, Sony Music, MTV. Playstation, umpteen governments, and a bazillion celebrities that are used to WP 4.x
You don’t want a $100/year customer. You’ll have to ramp up your customer support, and they’ll cost you far more than they pay. Supported installations start at $100k per annum. Customized installations start at $500k per annum. And they are vigorously supported.
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Similar to the Discourse model. Have open source that everyone is welcome to use, but support enterprises with paid options.
That way the enterprise users support the ongoing development of the open source project for everyone and Discourse can afford to hire staff to work on the project.
Edit: Link to Discourse
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So similar to how ACF do it. And a lot of others. Although for ACF there is a “pay once-update forever” model … not too bad working out for them though, is it? 
cu, w0lf.
ps: on a side note: With “just” a plugin, its probably easier to support the “pay once” model … IDK about a complete evolving CMS environment though …