Your paid Linux idea won't work, because money is not the only thing holding back the open-source community. Other reasons are:
- Design isn't appreciated or valued. A successful OS effort can't be driven only by engineers.
- An obsession with choice as an end to itself, and being unable to say, "This is what we think the best user experience will be. You can't change it."
- Fragmentation with too many APIs, GUI toolkits, and so on.
- Participants focusing on users like themselves (tinkerers and geeks) rather than typical end-users who want to use the device to get their real work done, rather than messing with the system.
Until you have a plan to address all these, throwing more money at the open-source community won't produce a macOS-quality OS.
If it's a paid Linux though, then you can get a team that:
-Appreciates design.
-Makes choices.
-Supports the most powerful and popular hardware.
-Yes, focused first and foremost on tinkerers and geeks, who are the main people losing out in the current environment. It's all a group that's increasing in size and will likely continue to for the foreseeable future.
"Makes choices" and "focused on tinkerers" are at tension with each other.
Because tinkerers want choice, such as with multiple window managers, sound subsystems or what have you. If you have N window managers, now you need to build and maintain all of them at a high bar, which is N times as much effort as one.
Plus the combinations: window manager X doesn't work with sound subsystem Y.
An awesome Linux would have just one supported window manager, filesystem, sound subsystem, and all the rest.
You will also need one dictator who understands eng, UX, product design, sales, marketing, and so on. The dictator listens to everyone, and people can present information and perspectives and debate as much as they want, but at the end of the day, it's the dictator's decision.
If you do all this, yes, you can succeed, in theory.
- Design isn't appreciated or valued. A successful OS effort can't be driven only by engineers.
- An obsession with choice as an end to itself, and being unable to say, "This is what we think the best user experience will be. You can't change it."
- Fragmentation with too many APIs, GUI toolkits, and so on.
- Participants focusing on users like themselves (tinkerers and geeks) rather than typical end-users who want to use the device to get their real work done, rather than messing with the system.
Until you have a plan to address all these, throwing more money at the open-source community won't produce a macOS-quality OS.