Then only us BF members with nothing better to do would be here. And every year as we die off the member count will drop.
If you were looking for a site to discuss bike stuff would you pay from the getgo or would you go to the site that is free?
And if you give a free trial period, well then, for the purposes of the spammers it'd be the same as being entirely free. At least until all possible character/numeral combinations have been assigned as member names and the spammers that managed to join are banned.
But then we'd be back to the annual die-off decreasing the membership and no available member names for new people to use!
hmmm!