A further instance of the type of behaviour you discuss: There has been more than a few times where there "just happened to be a new OSS project" or "new patch to $FOO" covering the use cases my bosses were talking about. Without such behaviour by me and mine, we would find ourselves re-implementing perfectly good OSS projects for one little change all the time.

Also, academics are frequently "paid to play" in essence, so the contributions from them should prolly count.