After being bombarded with emails from unsatisfied users who disapproved of the paid mods decision, Steam has finally announced that it will remove the payment feature from the Skyrim Workshop:
People may be pissed it was removed, but people were also pissed when Xbox One removed the DRM... So there is literally no pleasing some people. I would hazard though that the number of people angry about this are far outweighed by the number who are happy with this.
I mean that 130,000+ signatures on the petition might only be the tip of the iceberg. I'd imagine plenty never heard of it but still wrote to valve or complained on forums (including valve's forums). Plus any on reddit. (I know there were a few there since Gabe took to reddit to answer questions/explain this and was likely blasted there...)