> I guess the moral of the story is if you build cool things, people are willing to chip in.
I wouldn't agree with the statement entirely. There are people who were building cools things, but getting support has been hard for many of them. Specially in the early 2000s, open source felt like a very personal battle to build cool stuff, where people with sheer will and luck survived. Now, OSS developers like Andreas thrive and grow because of community support.
In the last few years, Open Source went through a cultural shift that enabled people to ask for support openly. You know the human behind the work, not an organization. You have Andrew Kelly of Zig, Evan You of Vue and many more who are not organizations but individuals making contributions. It is a radical change.
We have also seen a radical change in sentiment that all developers are bounded by some moral internal code to support OSS projects, whether it be through code, answering Stack Overflow questions or through donations.
Another aspect is that, code streaming and creating community chatroom has enabled many developers to share their ideas openly and create microcosms of spaces where communities can form. These communities are sources of support in the form of development, spiritual support and income.
It is not entirely about cool things anymore. It is more than that. We probably are living in the golden age of Open Source development.