Everyone is free to make such service, or host a chatmail relay and ask for donations, but for Delta Chat project the goal is to host as little as possible, not to become the hoster of everyone’s relay.
Nothing in the existing clients prevents them from using commercially-provided servers. Many DC users also use self-hosted servers or servers they run on a hosting service.
By default the standard server software allows open registration, and is so cheap to run that charging users is not worthwhile. There are probably well over a hundred free-to-use servers out there, so anyone asking people to pay for the same service might not get many takers.
It should be cheap, until it isn’t. I have joined a meme group chat and the usual issue is someone’s storage is full while they are away
I also experienced the full storage when i turn on multi device mode, while it maybe a bug, it doesn’t help with my anxiety
and i may want to no need to discuss it with current free chatmail server admin, it is easier to just pay someone
and with paid server maybe we can run bots, jitsi video call server, and so on
while paying someone maybe possible outside the chat application, some people may just want the convenient, and okay with paying the commissions, just like someone paying the Wordpress/Discourse hosting even if they can do it cheaper by directly install it themselves
imagine just clicking the add relay button, click pay, then storage increased, even if the relay need to be changed there
Hmm, it’s easier and faster to set up your own server and just “join the federation,” meaning you can communicate with other servers and have as much space for yourself as you want. You can invite anyone to your server, but why bother? I’m responsible for someone else, and I’m willing to take money, but responsibility for someone else isn’t my thing.
That’s the point though. I am quite capable to manage my own chatmail servers, but i am not really sure if i want to manage it even for my friends/family.
I have had my own father pay for wordpress.com knowing it is from Automattic, the founder of Wordpress itself, even though i can download the software from wordpress.org and install it on my own server.
That said, perhaps before creating my own client to do this feature, maybe i will see if i can do it on a simple website first, then after the server created, as usual adding the relay should be just a click.
Paid servers will also have quotas, if presumably larger ones. Sending large meme images would tend to use up space faster. If you want to use Deltachat with existing commercial mailservers you can, no problem. A DC-specific paid mailserver does not seem to offer any advantages.
You can run bots using the existing free servers, or indeed any server; bots are just automated mail-answering agents. There are also free Jitsi servers, and they used to be integrated into Deltachat, but now audio and video chat is done with Iroh instead.
Integrating payment methods into Deltachat is an interesting idea (what method? Wero? NLnet-supported GNU Thaler, which uses blind cryptographic signatures?). By all means start a separate thread on this proposal.
The more interesting uses for payment methods do not seem to be buying mail storage, though. If a person can use DC to buy more storage, they could just use DC to download the mail and obviate the need for more storage.