It was supposed to be the witnesses salary itself that funded development in combination with the ninjamine.
If you are outraged now, just wait until they start siphoning the ninjamine into their own pockets when it should of been destroyed:
Exactly my thoughts as well. The witnesses are already collecting many times more per month than it costs to run a witness node, even at the current HIVE price. And now they are the majority of the ones applying for (and getting) proposal funding... some of which is likely to eventually come from the STEEM ninja mine as you alluded to.
It's great and all if someone builds something that adds tremendous value, but those are few and far between thus far and many of the top witnesses are the ones receiving all the funding. The rich are certainly getting richer.
I don't have a problem with the SPS and DAO, but the amounts people are applying for and getting right now are pretty ludicrous considering that HIVE has zero revenue and the project is only a few months old... my opinion is we need to pump the breaks a little here until we have something more sustainable...