My company started as an open source project. Most of our hires are open source contributors. We're distributed all around the world (many open source companies

My company started as an open source project. Most of our hires are open source contributors. We're distributed all around the world (many open source companies are like this). There are usually 3 kinds of paid contributors we see: 1. Companies scratching their own itch while we maintain it 2. People I hire to work on the project 3. Phd students technically on a stipend doing their research with us (we do AI) Another possibility is a 3rd party company paying someone to add a pull request to an open source project whether that be us or others.