In message <199712221708.JAA28565@fawn.cs.wwu.edu>, Phil wrote: 

-> There would need to be more than this for someone like me to step up and
-> take a job.  I have summers "free" and usually need to get some income
-> during that time to help me through.

[...]
-> Just to throw some numbers up ... let us assume I want to use my summer
-> to work on NetBSD and have it funded.  I can easily get an employer to
-> pay me $35/hr for Web CGI programming.  But for NetBSD, lets say that
-> I'll accept $25 because it is a project on which I love to work.  21
-> days per month, 8 hours per day ==> $4200 per month.  

When *I* originally saw Peter's mail, I interpreted it as nothing more than
"here's a way to sweeten the pot for people who would develop the driver
for free anyway", and as such I think it's a good idea.  If someone ponied
up some hardware that I fancied, and I had the spare time, I'd do the driver
for nothing more than a chance to play and/or maybe get to keep the gadget.
This is the sort of thing that I think would work well where the bounty is
being put up by an individual (translated: someone w/out the resources to 
pay $4200/month for code).

Assuming people wanted stuff done badly enough to start a cash "pool" for
a specific project, it could work for larger projects too (although 3mos
@ $4200 is still probably outside the range of this unless a *really* large
group of people went in on it or someone ponied up a *lot* of money).

I think this proposal will probably fall short in the "pay real money for
longer-term projects" (ie, the scenario you propose) unless some corporate
entities (translation: those w/the resources to pay you $10k for a few months
of coding) step into the picture.  However, I think regardless of whether this
proposal solves the "contract programmer for hire" problem, it's still worth
a try... The bored college students could benefit by raising some cash or
picking up some hardware, and NetBSD could benefit by new code/coders/etc.

All IMHO, of course.
--rafal
----
Rafal Boni                                                rkboni@concentric.net