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I've noticed that when a side project becomes a Patreon project, suddenly more time is spent with community involvement; blog posts, live streams, etc. Even $100 a month creates this implicit reporting obligation to keep the community in the loop, which might end up eating time that might be spent doing something else. It might also burn out a more introverted developer.

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You'd deal with the same problem if you received $100 through a donation button. People would start saying things like "I didn't pay $5 for you to take a leave of absence for a month!" or "I paid $5 and you aren't going to implement my request?"

Accepting money at all is not a trivial decision.

Many developers, IMO, actively ignore their community (close issues, ignore pull requests) and take their project the direction they want to without external interference. (and this is their divine right)

However I think this implicit obligation you refer to would keep projects open.

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