I'm surprised that Welsh argues that tenured CS profs still have to follow what publication venues want to see. Why not just say, "Fuck it?", publish on blogs / arvix.com/, and let the field catch up to them?
Because funding agencies don't like it. They'll look back at previous funding you've been given, and rightly or wrongly, look at the peer-reviewed articles that came out of it. If you're pushing everything to arXiv, then it looks like something went badly wrong and you can't be trusted with future money.
As the OP says, the problem is not just ideas, but how those ideas are disseminated and what that means to your funding stream. Saying "fuck it" is a really good way of screwing up your funding stream for years.
Because funding agencies don't like it. They'll look back at previous funding you've been given, and rightly or wrongly, look at the peer-reviewed articles that came out of it. If you're pushing everything to arXiv, then it looks like something went badly wrong and you can't be trusted with future money.
As the OP says, the problem is not just ideas, but how those ideas are disseminated and what that means to your funding stream. Saying "fuck it" is a really good way of screwing up your funding stream for years.