You will always have free-riders and I'm not suggesting V4V is the answer for everything. I guess I'm saying it isn't even being tried effectively. Think about it this way.

A single ad impression for Google or any ad supported platform is very small. Sometimes fractions of a penny. But at scale it is a huge amount. What I'm suggesting is that if we used bitcoin's layer two systems we could more effectively support open source. It isn't feasible to use the fiat layer twos for this. Nostr and SN are good examples of how micro payments can work.

You could also require people to pay to use the software using the same tech. Really, the only solution for burned out devs is for devs to set their own expectations and boundaries. There are probably more burned out dev blog posts than there are bitcoin obits. If you write OSS code and don't realize it can be thankless work then I don't know what to tell you. We have tools and people ready to help you monetize it.