A programmer economy, D style?

[Pragma]

Georg Wrede wrote:
>> Bill Baxter wrote:
>>
>>> Mike Parker wrote:
>>>
>>>> Sean Kelly wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Mike Parker wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I've thought about cash prizes and contests. I just had the 
>>>>>>> nagging feeling that the result would be a circus rather than 
>>>>>>> serious development.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What about bounties? 
>>>
>>>
>>> Getting some Google summer-of-coders might be good too.
>>> Where there any proposals for D this last time around?
>>>
>>> --bb
>>
>>
>> Actually there where (one mine), but it was ineligible to participate.
>> The reason was: proposals must be submitted under the respective mentor
>> organizations, and if there is no mentor organization for the proposal,
>> it can be submitted to Google. However this year's SoC (unlike the
>> previous one) such applications without mentor organization must have a
>> high "academic research focus", and when I found that out it was too
>> late for new mentor organizations to sign up (one representing D was 
>> needed). :(
>> I think it's an opportunity that should not be missed next year.
> 
> I've been thinking about this..........
> 
> 
> IF there was as site where companies could specify apps, 
> segments-of-apps, classes, or downright functions that they wanted to 
> have, and if they specified how much they'd pay for them, how many 
> people here would want to sign up as "potential coders"?
> 
> It's not like this were my dream to host, but given enough 
> encouragement, support, or motivation, then I might really consider it. 
> (And, of course, anyone else is free to set up a competing web site 
> right now, without asking me.)
> 
> For a customer ready to adopt D, this would be an excellent way of 
> jumping up to speed. And, for a company _not_ yet ready to use D, this 
> could be an opportunity to acquire well programmed, fast and robust 
> prototypes, for a fraction of the cost of ordering them the reagular way 
> from SW-houses.
> 
> Opinions?
> 


I've seen something like this before, but I'll be damned if I can 
remember any specific URLs.  There's a few sites like this online that 
do in fact farm out piece-meal work.  An individual with enough time and 
skill can make a decent amount of cash out there doing slews of meager 
(handfuls of hours each) contracts.

I'll add that I recall seeing quite a few "write me a COM component 
which will do X" requests out there that seemed fairly technology 
agnostic.  To those customers, it's about the end-product rather than 
the codebase.  This would be one way someone could guerrilla-market D by 
making inroads and establishing a profile as a freelance D coder.

But I see what you mean.

My $0.02: Would you be satisfied with setting up a 'Classifieds' section 
in the dsource forum?  I can't speak to this directly, but I'm sure Brad 
would go for it.  Another option would be to ask Walter if he'd set up a 
"d.D.classified" newsgroup.  Either way, given that the community is 
still kind of small, a bounty-is-optional model might get things moving 
a bit faster at first.

-- 
- EricAnderton at yahoo