>on the basis that people are more likely to keep things going if you're paying for them.
That could also make people feel obligated to keep things running when they really don't want to. Imagine the feeling of still needing to shut down a service people have paid for because it was still not making enough money to be worth it. Now you have paid customers you have an actual obligation to. I can imagine that would be very stressful.
> shut down a service people have paid for because it was still not making enough money to be worth it.
but why would it not be worth the money paid for? you can't just charge some token market rate, hoping for scale to profit - you _ought_ to charge the amount it costs plus profit to run it, and so even if you had 1 user, it would be profitable.
Now, whether this is something the owners want to maintain is a different question vs can't charge enough to be worth it.
>so even if you had 1 user, it would be profitable.
That isn't really the case, though. There is a minimum amount of infrastructure you need. One paying customer is not going to cover that. And a project that pays for itself with a little profit is still not always worth it if you are killing yourself to maintain it, have another job, etc.
That could also make people feel obligated to keep things running when they really don't want to. Imagine the feeling of still needing to shut down a service people have paid for because it was still not making enough money to be worth it. Now you have paid customers you have an actual obligation to. I can imagine that would be very stressful.