The bounty model is not new. The corporate world has a name for it: consulting. Have something you need done but can't do? Hire someone outside to do the job for you. They do the work, you pay them money, and that's the end of it.

Instead of contrasting open source with the bounty style, let's look at why the bounty model might be superior to consulting:

Openness: The contractors have to be very explicit about what they want. They can't vaguely describe the project to lure you in, and then change the specs: it's all up on the webpage. What they ask for is what they'll get.

Working conditions: No chance of being treated as a slave employee here. They don't even have to know about you until you've finished the coding! You can work how you want, where you want, and when you want, in addition to being able to pick all your own projects.

Negotiating power: In conventional contracting, your pay is set before you start work -- which, for the coder, is when you are at your negotiating weakest. In the bounty model, you can have the entire product ready before you first approach the customer; which not only means that you have a better idea of the worth of your work, it means that you have the upper hand.

There are probably other benefits. The point here is that the bounty model is a replacement for contracting, not open source. The niche that contracting fills isn't going to disappear; people are still going to need in-house custom data acquistition software written. While bounty coding may have all the disadvantages described in the essay, conventional contracting has them worse. Why should we be against anything that shifts power towards the hackers?