I'm sure they were accepting your applications in case something exceptional comes their way. They will lose some minor good faith with the open source communit

I'm sure they were accepting your applications in case something exceptional comes their way. They will lose some minor good faith with the open source community, but, from what I've seen, in the eyes of most companies, "open source community" is seen as a bunch of exploitable randos on the Internet. One prominent and beloved tech blogger even once refused to hire an open source commiter (to his company's project) because "why pay him, he's already working for us for free".