I see your point, and agree that it isn't necessarily true that technical projects have a WMF-dependency. That said, my experience is that this tends to be true in terms of many of the grant proposals we've seen for technical projects in the past...particularly in the first-ever round of IEG right before we added this criteria.

Thanks for this last comment reframing the concerns - it is true this isn't a policy that grantmaking sets on our own, and we don't really love it either. As WMF engineering strategy updates over time, I would like to look into potential adjustments to what has in the past been a bright line. What I'd suggest we might do for this next round of IEG is revisit this on a case-by-case basis, looking at, for example, whether there are enough volunteers with code review permissions to ensure that any grant-funded proposals for extensions and the like would be able to go into production in a reasonable time-frame. If we can ensure that someone is committed and able to help get grant-funded work go live, we'll be more able to fund - we just really don't want to fund something that will never get through code-review, because wasting grantee time isn't good for anyone. In the past, that hasn't been something we were able to ensure. That said, I hope that we can work together on potential solutions for this. Suggestions about what changes to the eligibility or selection criteria you think would help us better achieve this, keeping in mind that we don't control WMF engineering resources, would be welcome.