When we engaged OpnSense, they had a website, had an email for support/service inquiry, and even a website to "buy support subscriptions"...

This made the process VERY easy to get through our legal hurdles, and "buy 20 hours/year in support" (which we likely won't use even half of)... we also contracted a professional service to simply sit down with a developer to go over how they intend the image to be created/automated... while we could figure this out, it was another opportunity we could classify as a professional service to get through our systems. This is certainly not "paying them what they are worth", by any means, but our budget allowed us to spend a few thousand a year at least.

Apache, on the other hand, has been difficult... We want to support a specific project, and would like a similar relationship, but the developers are not listed anywhere, and there's no support mechanism except through 3rd parties. It seems your best bet is to put out a request, and see if they are an active member of the project, and try to negotiate with them individually? That's not going to be an easy sell to management.