Comment by eXpl0it3r

Sometimes it's that devs still like the project, but more often it's probably just the fame/exposure that they don't want to lose. If you have no compassion for a project and the demand is high, it's still your decision to invest your time for no money exchange. You can just ignore the demands, if you can accept that your project might eventually fold.

This is additionally supported by the point that only few maintainers will hand out commit rights to other devs. They rather complain about all the workload and demands than give up some of all of their control, so others with more passion or who are even paid can continue working on the project.

If you want to be paid for your code, then pick a license model that matches it, but it will mean that you won't rise to the top, as only a limited amount of people will use it.

I wrote some more thoughts on this, during the "Moq incident" earlier this year: https://duerrenberger.dev/blog/2023/09/23/foss-funding/