Counterexample: Apache Software Foundation projects, and projects elsewhere which have adopted ASF style governance or something similar.
While there is surely a long tail of Open Source projects which don't have (and shouldn't have) such a governance structure, many of the most widely used projects do. The bargain that project founders make is giving newcomers a real governance stake and thus ceding some control over the project, in order to make it worthwhile for contributors (and their employers) to invest — with some contributors eventually becoming maintainers.
> The reality of the situation is almost nobody actually wants to maintain anything unless they are paid to do so
True. And that's perhaps why ASF-style governance has found a niche in Open Source: it provides one solution to a problem often seen as intractable.
While there is surely a long tail of Open Source projects which don't have (and shouldn't have) such a governance structure, many of the most widely used projects do. The bargain that project founders make is giving newcomers a real governance stake and thus ceding some control over the project, in order to make it worthwhile for contributors (and their employers) to invest — with some contributors eventually becoming maintainers.
> The reality of the situation is almost nobody actually wants to maintain anything unless they are paid to do so
True. And that's perhaps why ASF-style governance has found a niche in Open Source: it provides one solution to a problem often seen as intractable.