The time-tested model for a situation like this that benefits everyone is big company offering X as a service hires/funds N developers in proportion to the popu

The time-tested model for a situation like this that benefits everyone is big company offering X as a service hires/funds N developers in proportion to the popularity of that service on their platform. That helps ensure the project is sustainable, gives back to the community the big service obviously benefits from, and is certainly a form of "good karma". I think a lot of people are upset due to the perceived violation of that social contract, though it obviously isn't a legal issue and may not even be a moral one depending on where you draw the line. AWS has the appearance of benefitting enormously from many OSS projects but rarely funds contributions - funding that would be a rounding error to the AWS budget. The ball is entirely in Amazon's court. They've earned this reputation (fair or not). They can make the problem go away at any time if they want to spend a little money.