This is actually awesome. The company that pays should be also directing the efforts towards practicality and usability.
The alternative would be to give a grant so the developers would waste it implementing nonsense toys that no one cares about, like 99% of Spiral grants, for example.
Spiral is doing God's work IMO. While a lot the stuff seams like toys, it's just low-level, early, and exploratory work that wouldn't get done otherwise.
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Because it is not worth doing. Meanwhile they are crowding out more practical projects these grantees could be doing.
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