We discussed it briefly once, but didn’t come to conclusion. Actually we haven’t discussed commercialization so much yet, as we don’t yet have a viable product.
Personally I don’t like organized bounty system for the following reasons:
- There is no easy way to ensure the bounty is actually paid. We aren’t a financial company, and it’s not feasible to become one just for that.
- Fixed price for programming job is rarely a good idea.
- It would only work well for small and localized bugs. E.g. if there are several people involved, how do they share the bounty? If several people provide a fix independently, which one gets it? If the fix is good enough for the user but not for integrating it into mainline, how do we handle it etc.
So I guess it’s better to leave it up to users and contributors themselves. Some projects have special mailing lists or discussion boards where users can make requests and offer services, I think it’s better than trying to regulate it.