So non-employees join and provide free support to other users without having to pay them.

Starting in the CompuServe era, and ending in about 2001, I was a voluntary member of the MVPs for Windows programming. You would get swag, including a full MSDN subscription. My reason for joining this and for otherwise posting hopefully helpfully on forums was to lower the barrier to Windows programming.

I was idle vis-à-vis this by about 1999, and was excluded from the benefits as a result.

Then I posted on several threads within rec.autos.bmw and I got an extra year or two of benefits.