In what way is this a 'crazy amount'? If it were 100% personnel costs, it would only pay for a dozen or two people max. Is that an unreasonable number of people working on SSL?
There are literally thousands of people working at SSL companies. 1100 at Comodo alone.
You beat me to this sentiment. That was my thought exactly, 200K/mo is peanuts for a full time development team. And I am only talking salaries. Not perks, benefits, etc.
Which is why it is disheartening to me to hear anyone gasp at this request from LE. As you said there are many many companies using SSL that are spending truckloads a month on employee salaries, sending a 10,000 dollar check to LE each month for them should be in their own interest.
We are not holding corporations making millions off fundamental pieces of infrastructure like LE and OpenSSH accountable. These corps should really be ashamed and called out publicly for not donating healthy sums each month to these projects. IMO.
There are literally thousands of people working at SSL companies. 1100 at Comodo alone.