For most of us, as much as we enjoy making clever things, without the context of a job there aren't that many fun problems we have time to engage with.

It matters because doing so used to be worthwhile economically. Now it is exclusively a part-time for people who have time to do it for fun.

I'm still in business myself and I see the problems. But the article was not about what you suggest. It was about contributing open-source to a community and whether it is still worthwhile and fun, even if some community exponents started to use LLMs.