Relying on volunteers to maintain every open source project isn't long term sustainable. Funding open source projects could keep development moving, but would that funding be raised and who would pay for it?
Yes, there was once a plan to acquire a private island, name it Javascriptlandia, and certify it as a nation state so that they could start giving out top level .js domains.
Two engineers at Salesforce talk about how they decoupled a complex library from old spaghetti logic, then open sourced that library by creating a new internal process where none existed before.
No matter how well-intentioned and free wheeling a project is, at some point, to succeed at scale, decisions need to be made and conflicts need to be resolved. But is a project managed best by a single person with the final say or through building consensus with a committee of several people?
It can be intimidating to start contributing to an open source project. But with a little research and planning, you can be a valuable part of your favorite open source software.
After interviewing several developers, a pattern started to become clear: great developers share a lot. This takes different forms for different people, but is very often a blog. But for many top developers, their sharing mindset came before their success, and was the direct cause of it, not the result of it.