Not many people waive the fee currently. If a lot of people did, it would be a huge problem for publishers like PLoS and they would have to change their practic

Not many people waive the fee currently. If a lot of people did, it would be a huge problem for publishers like PLoS and they would have to change their practices. Assuming that won't happen, then if all publications were open access, there would be a lot more grant money that would have to be spent on publishing fees rather than research. That was the point the guy we originally replied to was making http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5052476 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5052476 so citing PLoS as an example isn't really meaningful. It's just an example of precisely the issue he was raising, not a rebuttal.