You wont find too many, as most are either contract workers or just volunteers, because “we want free software” doesn't really translate to pay for hard work and dedication.
> because “we want free software” doesn't really translate to pay for hard work and dedication.
That is one hell of a hot take. RedHat, SUSE, Canonical, would all probably disagree. (also, fwiw, so would I - I have been working on Open Source software for 5+ years, and have been paid for it for the entire time)
> as most are either contract workers or just volunteers
The linux kernel called, said something about having a large amount of fully paid, long term staff.
I get it, you don't like free software - but there is plenty of free software that people are paid to maintain and develop, and it has been a great benefit to software development as a result. Even paid for software is probably using some open source components, (runtimes, languages, compilers, libraries to name a few of them).
These are too few from the massive list of open source software out there. For almost any piece of technical software there is a free clone for it. I like free software, as in free to read the code, but not necessarily freeware.