1) There could probably be tax credits or deductions for SWEs who 'volunteer' their time to work on these projects.
Why exclusive to SWEs? They tend to be more time-restricted than financial-restricted (assuming the "SWE" comes from a job description). I'd be more interested in making sure that those with less well-paying jobs are able to access such benefits rather than stacking it onto those already (probably) making 6-figures.
Of course, the problems arise in the details. Define "volunteer": if $DAYJOB also uses it (in a way related to my role), is it actually, instead, wage theft? Also, quantifying the benefit is a sticky question. Is maintaining 10k emoji packages on NPM equivalent to volunteer work on libcurl? Could it ever be? Is it volunteer work if it ends up with a bug bounty payday? Google's fuzzing grant incentives?
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Why exclusive to SWEs? They tend to be more time-restricted than financial-restricted (assuming the "SWE" comes from a job description). I'd be more interested in making sure that those with less well-paying jobs are able to access such benefits rather than stacking it onto those already (probably) making 6-figures.
Of course, the problems arise in the details. Define "volunteer": if $DAYJOB also uses it (in a way related to my role), is it actually, instead, wage theft? Also, quantifying the benefit is a sticky question. Is maintaining 10k emoji packages on NPM equivalent to volunteer work on libcurl? Could it ever be? Is it volunteer work if it ends up with a bug bounty payday? Google's fuzzing grant incentives?