I still can’t understand why you’re comparing the grants program with FOSSHack. Why can’t both of them co-exist?
There is more to FOSSHack than the prizes. It is one of the two events where the entire FOSS United community comes together every year, we are able to reach thousands of new people every year and make them a part of the broader community. FOSSHack was what led to the establishment of FOSS United in the first place
I still can’t understand why you’re comparing the grants program with FOSSHack. Why can’t both of them co-exist?
I’ve already shared above why I think ideally there should be no FOSS Hack.
There is more to FOSSHack than the prizes.
Cool, then let’s drop the prizes, so that we stop setting bad standards by giving huge prizes to projects built in a day or two, not really useful/fun/different/long-lasting, are going to be abandoned, and let’s just have “fun group live-coding meetups or something in tinkerspaces/localhosts if they want to build stuff together” which I suggested? And incentivise people to build cool stuff and get grants?
entire FOSS United community comes together every year
Not sure about that.
we are able to reach thousands of new people every year and make them a part of the broader community
Cool.
FOSSHack was what led to the establishment of FOSS United in the first place
Cool, but doesn’t mean we can’t change it 
I guess the question is what FOSS Hack really is for.
I obviously want to see good useful/fun/different/long-lasting projects coming out.
I’m all in for helping spread awareness about FOSS and FOSS United, but there must be better ways than the typical “build something and forget” hackathons. MongoDB (and whoever is into these typical hackathons) can award a $9000 hackathon prize for a to-be abandoned project for their brand publicity, but I don’t think we should. So far, only programs like GSoC and Season of Commits have made sense to me — hackathons are pointless in general (internal company ones are a different topic).
I’m all in for helping beginner students too, but there are lots of other ways they can get better help.
I’m in for building stuff together for fun too, but for that we just need “fun group live-coding meetups or something in tinkerspaces/localhosts".