I've been wondering for a while if a company can work on purely open-source software and profit from the software itself, rather than only from the stuff that happens around it. The idea that I've been thinking over is a subscription for voting on features. That is, a user of the software will pay some monthly amount and get some number of votes for directing what new features will be implemented. Making sure that votes work properly and oft-requested features by people with low voting power still get implemented timely is one problem. Another is for companies that just want one bug fixed or feature added and aren't interested in long-term contribution. They could be easily outvoted by long-term contributors.

Has something like this ever been tried and how did it work or fail?