> It would make sense as a business venture when you'd throw in some economy
> of scale. MS can sell visual studio for peanuts, and keep that business
> unit out of the red, of course because they sell so many.
> 
> For relatively small projects like OCaml, any "pay for a feature" scheme
> would necessarily be out of reach of many customers.

Vim does this very well with "sponsor a feature"[1] - all you need is a
structured wish-list that people can mark a (financial) interest in. That
way, if you want a feature, and so do other people, then there may be enough
combined sponsorship to pay a (reasonable) amount for it. Bram only requires
enough to pay for a basic salary so he can take time off work.

While I have no idea how many people use Vim, I would imagine that it's
rather fewer than MS Visual Studio suggesting that the finance model
"works".


David

[1] http://www.vim.org/sponsor/index.php