Comment by Galanwe

Unfortunately, a system can be individually unsustainable while being globally sustainable.

That is, maintainer burnout rate can be high, but a continuous influx of new maintainers could compensate.

In fact, a lot of industries work like that, and numerous examples regularly appear on HN. Video game companies are notoriously full of super bright young developers, which are squeezed until burnout, just to be replaced by a new ones.

As for the compensation bit, although I agree with the principle, I tend to disagree that it would solve the problem as a whole. Sure, some maintainers would be more willing to spend time on their OSS projects if they were paid, some might even quit their job and work full time on their OSS. But my personal experience is that money is but a short term replacement for passion. Once you reach the point where you're not willingly working on a project, additional money can give you a boost of motivation, but ultimately you will tend to procrastinate to work on it, until you just won't be able to force yourself to touch it.