[szhu]

That's true, and because of that reason I am wondering whether it's possible to make people pay for having their issues addressed rather than resolved. The triaging/addressing process is where many people feel like open-source work is thankless, and throwing money in the mix can help make it feel more fair.

Maybe people will be willing to pay if the cost was lower? Maybe when you file a ticket, you can include a $10 fee to make sure it gets 10 minutes of the developer's time. (Or maybe you can attach $10 to any ticket, not just yours.)

To reduce the kinds of disputes that come up, there would be no guaranteed result other than that the developer spends 10 minutes doing their best to address the ticket and that they leave a reply. If people feel like the devs are just wasting their 10 minutes, they can simply not pay next time.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think this is a good idea, even just for the sake of optics: simply having the "paid ticket" there, even if no one uses it, might make people more thankful of the non-paid tickets the devs are addressing. And it offers a great retort/actionable step for those who complain that tickets aren't being addressed.