sorry must've mistyped on the phone. I corrected my post.
I basically meant: corporations pay bills, without having a bill they do not pay stuff. they do not give away money if they don't have to. so paid support contracts are imho a good way for corporations to pay for FOSS. donations not so much
If you're a big open source project, sure, sometimes. If you're one of the hundreds or thousands smaller libraries they use, no, because there's no PR to gain from sponsoring a small project.
This is sadly true. As a tech lead i try to steer the team away from the old thinking that oss should not get developer love. At the very least make a small poc of the issue and supply that. We are all developers. You dont try to make it hard on coworkers, so dont make it hard of maintainers of an oss project you use.