I think there's a big assumption that maintainer does the work to gain notoriety. Many of them (myself included) do it completely anonymously. Many others have a traceable identity but still they may be motivated by other things.
If it appears on a resume, it’s done for notoriety. If it’s fully anonymous and never appears on a resume, then I concede you are right in that case, but I think that’s an extreme minority of cases among the types of projects the thread is discussing.
> If it appears on a resume, it’s done for notoriety.
There might be such people, but I doubt such projects would be very successful or notorious. Being able to put something on CV does not provide that long lasting gratification needed to develop/maintain software in the long run. If it's about your CV only, then there are probably more effective ways to achieve better returns.
(In my case I don't put my F/OSS on my CV and I don't think I'm "extreme minority")
As a hiring manager, a large fraction (easily greater than 50%) of resumes that I see do list OSS projects and contributions as accomplishments and technical experience.
Maybe I just see an unusual slice of the OSS maintainer world, but it’s very common.
