[bhousel]

> Realistically, we can't pay people full engineering salaries to do random OSS.

Why can't you?

Professors get paid full professor salaries to do "random research".

Doctors get paid full doctor salaries to treat "random illnesses".

I expect if you looked a bit closer, you'll find that "Random OSS" is maintenance that makes the entire ecosystem possible. Would love to hear from some of your engineers what they are doing to earn that $20/hr.

[yawaramin]

But professors are usually also required to teach classes or carry out other duties in return for getting research funding. They don't just get to randomly do whatever they want.

And doctors treating 'random illnesses' doesn't really work as an analogy–that would be more like if they could randomly decide to turn away patients they didn't 'want' to treat.

[smusumeche]

Here's an example of a project I worked on under this program - a website for a local community developer meetup.

[rusticpenn]

You overestimsate the amount of random research a Professor is able to do these days.

[dblock]

Right on.