alt Hacker NewsI'm currently a participant under a NLNet grant. I'm unemployed at the moment so getting a trickle of 1-2K of donation money per month working on my passion project is a pretty decent proposition.
You can also be a participant alongside your well paid job, because once the memorandum of understanding is signed you have a year to work through the proposal at your own pace, during weekends or moonlighting.
I don't doubt that at all and I'm glad for anyone who is managing to make some money from their open-source contributions, even more so in today's age where market is so volatile. I am being empathetic for that cause. But the point I am rather trying to convey is that this is not the strategy that will converge to something substantial that will make EU more competitive on global landscape.