When you find no one paying for maintainance, then congratulations: you are the maintainer !
Of course there will be some maintainers who are simply not interesed or unable to offer paid support (e.g. due to their employer being a control freak) but that's ok. As others have pointed out, forking / maintaining out of tree patches (and providing them to others) is not inherently hostile.
For you it is.
But for a maintainer, reviewing and accepting a pull request can still be a lot of work, especially if the code has been stable for a long time.