Comment by matvp
I contribute to OSS very often, mostly sponsored by the company I work for (we're in video streaming, and we're too small to build everything from scratch). Outside of company hours, I work on my personal streaming project [1], and I've had a couple of people find the "Buy me a coffee" button and GitHub sponsors page. While it is not a sustainable amount of sponsorship, the joy of seeing people support with a few bucks feels incredible. It's a passion project after all.
I used to maintain a private fork of an OSS project as I assumed my company wouldn't want specific features out there (especially since they gave a competitive advantage). I eventually met up with the maintainers of that project with a situation I couldn't figure out and they were so eager to help. After, I went to legal and told them it didn't feel fair to have OSS maintainers help out but keep it private, and to my surprise, they agreed. All I had to do was ask, and not assume.