Why exactly do you expect him to answer that? It’s not like he is working for the guy. He can do whatever he wants.
Reading this discussion I’m starting to understand why so many open source maintainers end up calling it quit.
Either…
This is something I, as someone spending some time on a passion or hobby project, don’t want to deal with and I’ll just ignore it.
Or
It’s a business transaction and I’ll at least try and explain what services I can provide, not just “lol pay me”. “We don’t have a release schedule. Except in the case of actual critical vulnerabilities making our users vulnerable, releases are tagged when we have enough functional changes to warrant them. If you would like to get in touch to discuss a support contract and us tagging a release just for you and your customers you can contact me at X.”
Refusing to engage on the question or how you can work together and just saying “lol pay me” definitely comes across as “fuck off” to me. And if that was the intent… better to not say anything at all.