Free (Libre) Software is great where it works, but that seems to be areas where the users are also programmers. You can't really gain the benefits of software freedom if you're not a programmer, so your experience degenerates into using it because it's zero-cost and your best chance of getting a change you want is to complain on a hostile mailing list.
People say that non-developer users should be able to hire developers to sort out problems in Free or Open software, but in practice this very rarely happens.
In a software mutual, the source would be closed but with a guarantee of opening it up if the mutual could not continue. Possibly with an option of source licenses for mutual members. However, there would be two key differences from a Free project:
- users who'd not paid wouldn't recieve the benefit of the software; no free-riders (modulo piracy, obviously)
- development choices would be made by vote of paying members, not just developers.