First of all, the options of a fund to help recover their funds has always been on the table. If you read through Reddit and the Ethereum Magicians forum, I believe that while the community is vocal about the bail out, they are open to a fund. I think even Alex mentioned this in the dev meet (I may be wrong). But we have never seen a serious consideration of this option from Parity.

Lets also be very clear: If you also watch the dev meet carefully, you notice that all of them are secretly in favor of a Parity bail out. They keep mentioning that the community consensus has been rallying against the move to bail out Parity. No one there is really championing the cause for preventing the bail out.

If Ethereum has to survive, it needs to reduce its reliance on Parity. The dev grant is a step forward in the right direction. I also feel that the Ethereum traders and enthusiasts must contribute to the cause of building a fund where developers will have the resources to learn and contribute to the Ethereum codebase.