It isn't that's it's not doing your part, it's that to think they are equal amounts of work, time, value and money.
Creating the Linux kernel is different to packaging an upstream Dependency. Or fixing a bug in a dependency.
You effectively owe the maintainer again for the work they do reviewing your work. Something that takes them away from their free time and other issues.
Sure both are hard and valuable but they are not equal difficulty or value.
The company earns money based on the revenues produced by the software that uses the maintainers product. That money goes to you as part of your wages and you think a bug fix is enough to compensate for the maintainers additional time for looking or merging your bug. Do you see now how that might not be reasonable or fair? Your balance debt to the maintainer is negative even after your bug fix. Especially given money is involved so it's doubly negative.
You also need to think of the time and money the maintainer spent in addition to the work to produce the initial product. So there you are even more indebted to the maintainer.
You’re looking at this as a one-sided transaction. The distinction between producers and consumers is not clear cut, especially if you consider only the subset of developers who submit patches.
In reality, unless they run their own handwritten OS, the roles are going to be reversed next week, where that maintainer benefits from the other person’s work (and salary as you say) through another piece of software. This is the premise of free software. Each contributes what they can, everyone benefits.
Creating the Linux kernel is different to packaging an upstream Dependency. Or fixing a bug in a dependency.
You effectively owe the maintainer again for the work they do reviewing your work. Something that takes them away from their free time and other issues.
Sure both are hard and valuable but they are not equal difficulty or value.
The company earns money based on the revenues produced by the software that uses the maintainers product. That money goes to you as part of your wages and you think a bug fix is enough to compensate for the maintainers additional time for looking or merging your bug. Do you see now how that might not be reasonable or fair? Your balance debt to the maintainer is negative even after your bug fix. Especially given money is involved so it's doubly negative.
You also need to think of the time and money the maintainer spent in addition to the work to produce the initial product. So there you are even more indebted to the maintainer.