Science is funded by money from projects. You write a project proposal and apply for funding. Isn't ghc funded by money from Glasgow University or something like that?

Some contributors are, but Simon PJ is at Microsoft Research and Simon Marlow used to be too (in case you were wondering where F# came from).

Also, funding projects not people is a relatively recent notion; e.g. most fundamental physics breakthroughs of the 20th century were done by people who didn’t have to write grant applications.

Exactly - and the amount of effort this consumes is immense. You end up with grant-writing and paper-publishing institutions where the actual advance of knowledge is squeezed between the two.

But what is the alternative? You need a generic way of deciding who gets how much money and I don't see another way except for the whole project application process. The only alternative is someone gives money to things he likes... Companies can afford that but the public sector cannot because it is ripe for corruption.

There are companies who can do the grant-writing for you.

> Science is funded by money from projects.

Yes, FOSS projects are projects too? Or use subprojects if you need more funding for the same project?

Because FOSS development and bureaucracy don't match, I think. Applying for grants is a huge administrative burden (both to acquire and to document the spending) so only the largest projects have enough organizational overhead to justify spending effort on it.

You're going in a dangerously socialist direction here. Let the free market sort it out, and may the best man (billionaire) win. We get innovation & progress that way.