But, crucially, if accepted, the contributor gets to draw 5€ from the repository’s fund of failed PRs (if it is there), so that first bona fide contributors are incentiviced to contribute. Nobody gets to profit from failed PRs except successful new contributors. Virtuous cycle, does not appeal to the individual self-interest of repo maintainers.
One thing I am unsure of is whether fly-by AI contributions are typically made with for-free AI or there's already a hidden cost to them. This expected cost of machine-driven contribution is a factor to take into account when coming up with the upside/downside of first PR.
PS. this is a Gedankenexperiment, I am not sure what introducing monetary rewards / penalties would do to the social dynamics, but trying with small amounts may teach us something.
Well that's awfully assumptuous. So now a young college kid needs to spend time and money to be able to help out a project? I also don't like that this model inentivizes a few big PR's over small, lean, readable ones.
We're completely mixing up the incentives here anyway. We need better moderation and a cost to the account, not to each ccontribution. SomethingAwful had a great system for this 20 years ago; make it cost $10-30 to be an external contributor and report people who make slop/consistently bad PR's. They get reviewed and lose their contributor status, or even their entire account.
Sure, you can whip up another account, but you can't whip the reputation back up. That's how you make sure seasoned accounts are trustworthy and keep accounts honest.