How do middle-sized open source projects survive?
I get that majority of small open source projects are led by volunteers who consider it a hobby.
At the same time, some big projects can earn money by offering enterprise support [1], selling courses/certification [2] or by charging for repository packages. [3]
However, how do medium-sized players like Wireshark, GIMP or LibreOffice survive? I'm not sure that donations make a huge difference and it doesn't seem they have some support plans.
[1] Ubuntu: https://ubuntu.com/support
[2] RedHat: https://www.redhat.com/en/services/training-and-certification
[3] Conda package manager is free of charge but for using the Anaconda repository, enterprise users have to subscribe to a paid edition: https://www.anaconda.com/blog/anaconda-commercial-edition-faq LibreOffice has sponsorship from companies that sell support etc around it and employ devs. Wireshark is afaik sponsored by companies too, both users and companies that sell trainings.