I'll take both (as they solve different issues) but I'm a realist as well:
- While MC is commercial I find it is not so much "requests" that works but muffins (and what takes Jim's and Matt's fancy). My current strategy is like Chinese Water torture.... just relentlessly nagging in my case in the hope that they decide it is easier to provide the feature to make me go away (but I guess they know I'll just move onto other great ideas like the Intercom
)
- For nevcairiel I know it is solely down to what features he wants personally and hence was gutted to see his switch to MKV over BD.
We are all happy to contribute $'s and while I make sure to donate to nevcairiel when the MC renewal comes around I know that for MC and nevcairiel it really does little than buy a few beers at best so it is hardly a financial incentive.
That said these requests to help advance the appeal of the products in general and if / when nevcairiel decided to develop and charge for a BD Navigation filter I'm sure it would sell in reasonable quantities as it would be used by a wide range of players not just MC. Another option would be (given nevcairiel's talent and the current resource crunch) would be to enter into a relationship to tap his skills as a part of the MC dev team but that is waaaay out of my prerogative about what commercial relationship would make sense to both parties.