err, I'm quite new here... and I haven't seen/noticed this email list for announcements; is it so that all forum members receive announcements or should I/we subscribe for it? where?
paid support/membership or donor/contributor status might allow you (i.e.):
+ access to a help desk app; this forum is great, but sometimes you might want/need immediate attention or an authoritative answer in a certain matter
+ 1 basic site/pligg install per year
+ 1 site tunning/optimization per year
+ some discount for the PRO shop
+ license removal for as long as you're a contributor; lets say you want to customize your site and remove all references to pligg.com and still be a good citizen
+ other ideas? B)
lets say a donation from $30/y to $100/y would grant one this contributor/donor status; $100/y IMHO is quite high and it would place pligg more like a commercial product rather than open source (community driven)
still, pocket sizes are different; one might be willing to donate $50+ and get a pligg representative to install/optimize the software on his server; or other might be willing to pay upfront $30 in order to get 10% discount on any pligg pro product; etc