After some reflection, I agree 100% with Will. Directly paying for a relay is like paying a torrent tracker. There will always be people willingly doing it for free. Altruism will always exist.
Discussion
I hate apple but in this case at least apple users are paying the relay for everyone else 💁🏻♂️
Are we going to be dependent upon grant-funded relays forever, then?
Most free relays are not grant funded. Is everything free on the internet grant funded?
Most free relays have 3 people writing to them or they seem to not last very long. Every person can just host their own "free to them" relay, after all.
Nobody is going to be running a "free" relay for thousands, or even millions of people, just out of altruistic intentions. That's a full-time job with serious infrastructure, legal, and energy costs. Basically sys admin.
sommerfeld, king of bad takes
he doesn't care that everything he's doing is being fed into a model to sell stuff for him or to sell to his enemies to do him in
i say anyone who is ok with the customer-is-advertiser model of social networks is a bootlicker
because the primary beneficiary is shadowy political organisations
I always want to see who I'm paying and know the exact price and what I am paying for.
I think bundled financing, like with Damus, is just a relay business model that makes sense for some client developers, although I'd want premium relay service, if my subscriptions funded it. No throttling, longer retention policies, etc.
I see other business models focused on relay management, for particular user bases or use cases.