Both of these instances were far in the past so hopefully things have changed now, and I have indeed seen closed things on Github actually get opened up rather than happen the other way (whoo), so I hope history does not repeat itself but it does still scare me considering the question asked. ^.^;
And yeah, I was never talking about hex getting paid at all, that is a great idea, I was purely talking about the software on hex eventually getting less open just because of other users choices, nothing about hex at all.
Have you thought of adding a patreon-like system? That would help fund both hex and the package authors both (which has elsewhere shown to increase the quality of packages substantially). 
hex.pm and open-source