[jimmaswell]

Hiring a full time dev just for FOSS submissions probably isn't justifiable to most employers, but diverting just a little employee time seems reasonable, especially if it's directed at bugs/feature improvements impacting the devs' use of the thing.

[pessimizer]

Instead of a little time from a lot of employees (which might be as much a burden for the project as a blessing), it might be better for many companies to pay into a pot that provides someone's salary, while one of the companies donates the desk. This is what I meant by administration.

[xboxnolifes]

An issue with that is that even if you use a FOSS solution, your devs might not have the domain experience to contribute. Of if they could, it may be pretty inefficient to or take a while to get up to speed to get any meaningful contributions in.