> The project is run by volunteers
I don't believe this is an accurate characterization in 2025.
Discussion
Agree with all your other points.
It is starting to get fuzzier, some full time contributors have employment contracts, most have some kind of grant. Most of us did start out as volunteers and sank countless hours into it without any expectation of renumeration. I also don't think being volunteers or not is all that relevant. There will always be some kind of weird relationship between an OSS project's developers and its users and I don't think there is a way around that.
It's still a volunteer effort in the sense that users are not paying customers.
What? That's not what volunteer means. Are you pointing out that it's not a commercial project? I don't understand your point.
Paid volunteers are a thing. Especially if you consider the opportunity cost of not working for Google.
From the point of view of a user it doesn't matter if a developer is working from savings, government welfare, or hired by a benevolent rich Bitcoiner. Users are not customers of the developers. There's no fiduciary duty. They don't get to make demands. You would treat them exactly as you would a volunteer in the more narrow sense of an unpaid volunteer.