[mdasen]

I wouldn't really call it a talent acquisition. It's more the same reason that any company pays people to work on open source projects. For example, Google pays people to make Flutter and Dart. Are those employees a "talent acquisition"? Clearly no because they started the project within Google. So then why is Google paying people to work on some MIT licensed thing? Well, it gives them a high-quality bit of code to build the things that are actually their business and it gives them a certain amount of control over the direction and priorities of the project.

Let's say that I make a library X that your company uses. You can use X for free so why acquire X? Well, if X is a project of your company, that can give your company positive reputational benefits by association. You can set the priorities and roadmap of X. I'd be working at your company so I'd be there to help other developers. I'd see the friction you had in your environment and want to remove that friction.

I'm not saying that the owner of an MIT licensed project can do anything they want. There's always the possibility of forks. However, there is still a certain amount of control. For example, Google's control of Go basically meant that they controlled the decision to go with a non-copying garbage collector because that was what would be best for Google and its codebase (and most people wouldn't care about the trade-offs that much).

I think it's more than just "here are some smart people we can acquihire." I think it gives them influence over a project they might see as important.