Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov> writes:

  Jason> What I would rather see is a bulletin board like thing, where two parties
  Jason> could meet and independently arrange for the work to be done.

  Jason> For example, a WWW page where consultants who take NetBSD-related work
  Jason> could list their names, the work they're willing to do, their rates,
  Jason> contact information, etc.  Another WWW page would allow people to post
  Jason> "Want Ads", e.g. "I need a device driver for the Foozap Whatzitz, and
  Jason> am willing to pay $xxx.yy for it."

Phil Nelson <phil@cs.wwu.edu> writes:

  Phil> So the amount of money needed to attract contract programmers who love
  Phil> to work on NetBSD is more than the "I'll give $100...".  And $25/hr is
  Phil> very low pay for good contract programmers.


As I understand it, the proposal was to have a pool where multiple
people put up their $100 (or whatever). The idea was that while $100
wouldn't be enough to get anything done n * $100 would be sufficient.
Jasons bulletin board wouldn't have that characteristic.

I dunno, it's an intriguing idea. The big problem I see is that when
money gets involved disputes arise. The normal way to minimise those
is to have clear well written contracts. And then you need to pay
people to draw up and manage the contracts and if you beleive that is
insignificant then you have never managed a contract. Hey I might do
coding as a hobby, but no way am I going to do boring stuff like
contract management for free!

So all of a sudden there is significant overhead. What would be good
is if we can figure out a practical method of getting people paid to
do work which has low overhead and has an acceptable level of
disputes, misunderstandings and inequity. (And if you can do that you
have potentially a significant discovery in business administration!).

A potential downside I see is people who have done and continue to do
a great deal of work for free might feel a bit pissed off if others
cherry pick (only do stuff for which there is a large pool). ie people
could get upset at the inequity. Of course, things are already unequal
as some people contribute much more than others, but my experience is
that once money becomes involved people see it a bit differently.

Ian