Look at another aspect. There's the work aspect: the lucky fellow who was paid $11k/month for creating one PR and two issues. There's also management/overfiew aspect: the organisation that didn't notice that it was paying.

If the organisation (I realise it's just a few people) were paying enough attet6ion to notice that it was paying for ~nothing, then it's a fair assumption that it would also be paying enough attention to its sponsors.

Definitely it is very surprising that they continued to pay despite there being close to zero output. If I tried this in my company I'd have a PIP in 2 months and probably get fired in another 2.

Most people pay because babel is useful and they want to support the project. Funds going to wrong hands is different deal.

I meant the org should have stopped paying an employee if he didn't work.

Perhaps, but that seems rather destructive. A more constructive approach would have been to pay attention to the sponsors.

They could have more money for 2 reasons: 1. People may have stopped the support seeing how the existing funding is mismanaged. 2. People may not support seeing how little work is done with the existing funding.

Basically better state of the project = more likely funding.

They would have more money by cutting unnecessary expenses.

The optimistic way is that maybe harder work would increase revenue.