Meh. The more devs they buy, the less those devs can contribute.
That said, no strings attached money is a common model for funding open source devs.
Buying a dev and supporting a dev are not equivalent. But telling the difference takes a long time.
Discussion
The support is called cultivation. At some point comes the ask and then there is a reward cycle. The cycle repeats.
So yah. It takes a while to tell the difference