I don't even think it's necessarily moderation so much as maintaining these high-traffic projects is now akin to a full-time job minus the pay.

At a certain point, companies need to step up and provide funding or engineering work or they should just keep expecting to get owned.

If there is a larger shift to companies paying for the software they rely on that is currently free, it's not going to be companies paying open-source maintainers, it's going to be companies paying other companies that they can sign contracts with and pass legal responsibility to.

Why would they when they can just... not?