"It would be easy to say that this is a failure of open-source in some way"

I have seen far more commercial, closed source products go through similar staffing crunches. The difference is that the problems are hidden away behind misdirecting sales teams and so on.

I can't tell you how many times I've reached out to someone on the inside of a company to get a straight answer as to whether a product is being properly staffed and supported. Or, conversely, how many times I myself have had to decide to orphan some commercial, customer facing work to meet a goal with a higher priority.

In my experience, useful open source products are less likely to suffer from inadequate staffing than closed.