> You get a set of bureaucrats who control who gets to work on OSS and what is being worked on. So I get that a grant necessarily defines some kind of who -- e

> You get a set of bureaucrats who control who gets to work on OSS and what is being worked on. So I get that a grant necessarily defines some kind of who -- even if the money is given to "the project," it will ultimately boil down to a person or persons who is receiving funds to work on the project. And there's also a what, in the sense that there has to be some kind of boundary to what is being developed. But it sounds like you're thinking of scenarios in which the "what" isn't "working on OpenSSL" or "writing Git," but some more specific demand: paying someone to work on some particular feature or problem, as opposed to giving the project money and having the people on the project decide where to put their attention. Maybe there's no way around that. Maybe there's no practical way to define the "who" precisely, while leaving the "what" ambiguous.