Those people are already getting paid in GitHub stars. Adding United Fruit Company dollars to the mix doesn’t make the compensation any more real.

What money will be entering this ecosystem? Absent funds flowing in, how will package maintainers be able to convert their tea bucks to something they can pay rent with?

Yeah those GitHub stars really help with burnout. When you're wading through a hundred pointless PRs of people trying to pad their contribution stats, those GitHub stars just release all the tension.