Sure... That's why nearly all the top contributors through out time have been paid to full-time work on WordPress by an entity related to Matt... Because free labour...
Using WordPress and paying attention to Trac are two different things.
There was a time where wordpress.com did not exist, you are glossing over that.
But that time is long gone and WordPress being what is it today fundamentally depends on paid labour and not free labour. It would have withered to the side like other CMSes that depended on free labour. Nearly every top contributor that we can see in the WordPress commit history was paid.
You’re mistaken friend. Just because that time is “long gone” doesn’t mean it wasn’t paramount to the success of this platform. A disproportionate amount of work towards the WP ecosystem has been unpaid.