You make a good point that the financial decision-makers and the engineers are often not the same people at companies, and this adds to the disconnect in how open source is valued. What do you think about the ideas presented at the end of the article suggesting some ways to address this, e.g. companies setting aside a fund for open source that their developers could decide how to spend?

From the "money people" perspective it would likely be more of a marketing/branding/recruitment/staff engagement expense (because those are the budget lines where they'll see value for the investment) - but at the end of the day the important thing is supporting critical open source projects.