> GitHub providing open source projects
> the option to buy reserved capacity.
I have no affiliation with GitHub, but I'd guess that if you were paying for one of their $200/month organization plans[1] you'd be having a very different conversation with them about rate limiting.
They probably aren't, but they aren't going to be using the infrastructure in the pathological way CocoaPods is either, which requires you to have a client that uses GitHub on behalf of your users.
I'm just pointing out that the feature you're wishing exists very likely already exists in practice. Unless GitHub is stupid they aren't going to be complaining about you pegging 5 CPU cores for $200/month.
How much cash do the top five open source projects bring in? That's the other side of it. Funding a side project, let alone a large open source project, is hard
1. https://github.com/pricing