[corobo]

Per hour would seem "do we need to pay this? We don't really need support do we? We could just buy it if and when we need it"

You're talking fair while I'm talking about the only legitimate way I can pay you for your time as an open source dev.

It would be nice if I could have my client retroactively pay you for your dev time in full but I like working with the client and don't fancy being laughed out of the room

In case you missed the subtext I rarely if ever actually use the support, I can just justify it to bigcorp's beancounters. Chances are you already provide the support for free in Issues anyway but I have a way to pay. I just want people paid at all mate. We can work on fair later

[quickthrower2]

This sounds like your problem and the world you are in. In my world I work for a company that offered a well paid devs months salary to get a bug fixed in OSS. They didn’t have the time soon enough so we ended up fixing it ourselves and doing a PR.

An OSS developer who wants to be paid needs to think like a business. They are more a business that happens to OSS. That would preclude certain OSS products while making others more viable. It is good to strategic. Best for most is to find a company to pay a salary for them to maintain it.