I often want to fix things myself, but often use a different language to one I use normally (PHP). Big projects have a lot of internal structure. Often you don’t have the latest version so you need to check out the dev. version re-test (often has the same missing the same feature and has the same bug). Which all adds a lot of time.
The main coders could probably do what I want in a short amount of time, so paying them is probably a good idea.
However, I can see some problems with giving them money. Unless there is steady stream of requests coming in or a request has a bounty 5 figure sum attached it’s not like they are going to get time off their day job and contracting someone is probably not worth the overhead. The person could be a contractor, but I doubt many of those are open source contributors in their spare time and probably only do it when related to their contracting - in which case you can contract them.