The status quo if you are a defunct project without any means to properly accept contributions or even just mention a new release on the homepage maybe. There are many example where open source as a model works, but you can't expect that it will magically solve all problems. Especially if you as a project are not even able to get the basics right. How is that supposed to foster contributions to the project?
Most successful projects in FOSS with many downloads get virtually no contributions or financial support back. Even the largest ones have an enormous user to contributor ratio with almost all benefits going to the users. Therefore, it's the status quo for open-source in general. Those getting tons of contributions and development without a company behind them are extremely rare.
I had a great article on this before my crashed HD deleted newer bookmarks. It was a woman that surveyed many popular projects to ask about their status. Most complained they were barely getting by, the developer(s) stretched thin, tons of requests without accompanying payment/support, and mostly no contributors. I'd like a link to that article if any readers know which one I'm talking about.
She never ended up finding a solution to the problem and instead ended up joining GitHub as a opensource developer advocate (or something similar to that).
