Open source software is a commons. And like all commons, it's being plundered by capital. "Paying maintainers," or whatever is a bandaid, at best. It may help some individual developers, but it doesn't protect the commons. At worst it undermines the commons by ceding control of it to a small group of people and their capital backing.
If we want to "support open source developers" then we need to protect the commons itself. We need to empower people to do that as members of the commons.