>If the authors never get money for their work, eventually they will quit or burn out, and then the project is in a worse spot I don't think your conclusion is

>If the authors never get money for their work, eventually they will quit or burn out, and then the project is in a worse spot I don't think your conclusion is axiomatic. There are plenty of flourishing open source projects, bug and small, that got handed over from the original author to new maintainers - sometimes multiple times. All without VC funding.