> Better AWS pays for Rust development than if noone would

Why?

There's a lot of stuff, even if all the humans are working for free, that's expensive about developing Rust. Our CI and CDN bills are massive, and someone has to pay them. Without it, we would not be able to support the platforms that we do, which is really important.

Because if people are paid to do something they can spend their workday doing it, which equates to more man hours put into the project.

> Better AWS pays for Rust development than if noone would.

That feels like a false choice, though. Rust is popular enough that surely another company (Fastly, for example?) would have good use for such a talent. But I doubt they can rival Amazon in pay. Such is the world.

If someone is working on a social good (the Rust compiler), is it not better that they are taking money from a large corporation rather than a smaller one that might put that money to better use?

Depends if that large corporation decides the direction of their work. Social good isn’t guaranteed in perpetuity.

> Social good isn’t guaranteed in perpetuity.

True, but employment isn't perpetual either. If they later decided that their work wasn't what they wanted to be working on then they would be free to leave at that point.

Well the problem comes when said corporation co-ops said good thing for their own gain, to the deficiet of the wider community.