I maintain an open source project. It isn't my day job though. Sometimes I accept pull requests right away, sometimes it takes me months to get to them. One advantage commercial projects CAN have is someone paid to do daily work on it. (Can is key, sometimes that person exists, sometimes that person doesn't get time)

an open source project that takes donations/patrons can also do that though.

There are very few individually maintained OSS projects that would generate enough money from donations.

Henry Zhu, who maintains the massively popular Babel transpiler, only gets $2200/month in donations

https://www.patreon.com/henryzhu

I agree with your main point that OSS is underfunded, but Babel also collects donations through Open Collective[1] and Henry Zhu withdraws a monthly maintenance fee (recently $8k/mo).

[1]: https://opencollective.com/babel

At least there's clear progress. Things like Patreon are great for reach and engagement. It's a step-up from having to either work at a company directly using the tech, or keeping it as a "side-project" that either eats your life away or lags behind.

projects don't get donations just by existing and being used. They need to actively acquire donors/patrons just like businesses acquire customers. Asking for patrons for an individual is also a whole different thing from asking for patrons for a project.