I think it's great that Segment is doing this, but I wonder: Is this the best way to pay people to work on open source software?<p>I very rarely see high quality open source software produced by people who are unemployed, and I don't know how many people would want to give up a well-paying job for a three-month stint as an open source fellow. Taking a leave of absence from your job to do this? Maybe, but three months seems like the worst possible duration -- long enough that you have to hand everything off to someone else, but short enough that the transition time is burdensome. This might work well for independent consultants, but that's about it as far as I can see.<p>It seems to me that a better approach might be some sort of part-time arrangement, allowing developers to stay at their existing employers on reduced hours -- almost like an open source software version of the flexible arrangements many companies make for new parents. The open source community would benefit by having a developer who has hours dedicated to the project; the employer would benefit by (a) keeping their employee and (b) probably making use of the software in question; and Segment would benefit by spending less per developer funded.