The obvious counter-example is OpenSSL: used everywhere, yet survived based on volunteer work for years. I would be surprised if there weren't plenty more in the myriad of dependencies used by those well-known projects.

Yes, my feeling always has been open source works best when the developers are the users since they feel the pain and see what needs to be changed.

barely survived, and then Heartbleed

Open Source is Open Infrastructure; and as an intellectual infrastructure we should be doing a lot more to fund it with 'tax dollars' as something that is enshrined in higher learning institutions; all of them. That would be the best way to support those interested in a career that produces open source contributions to our intellectual commons.

Unfortunately the plague that is rent seeking and patents have muddied the waters for that type of work for a long time.

Many of the largest, most known projects are this way but like most arts there is a really long tail of smaller projects that are done and maintained by people without pay.

> Opensource is not volunteers. > People doing mainstream opensource as their side task do not exist.

The vast majority of github projects prove that statement false.