With very few exceptions, open source projects (particularly infrastructure projects that add value to end-user projects) are not getting financial contribution

With very few exceptions, open source projects (particularly infrastructure projects that add value to end-user projects) are not getting financial contributions from the companies that monetize them. Just look at GnuPG, OpenSSH, or OpenBSD. These are projects that produce some really essential infrastructure that runs the modern web. This software has been in use at companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, IBM, etc for decades. They have received almost no support whatsover. Werner Koch (of GPG fame) was so broke and desperate that he considered getting a corporate job. Theo de Raadt tried to get support from any of the hardware vendors that used OpenSSH in their products. He eventually got a laptop from IBM after pestering them for a year. I doubt busybox or mksh get much in the way of support from Google or Android hardware manufacturers. I would hazard a guess that Firefox is better-funded than most open source "infrastructure" products.