How about you post bounties ... and you can try to implement them yourself?
This way you're giving everybody the same chance of a 'salary' that you're giving yourself.
If you'll work quickly and implement bounties, you'll be worthy of the payout.
If not, let the best/most efficient/cheapest coder win (while adhering to strict quality & security standards).
My vote goes to bounties.
There would be an issue with conflict of interest when setting bounty payouts. For instance, Willett can set a bounty for a feature, and in the case he expects no one would pick up such a bounty an artificially high bounty would be set.
Who says it's "artificial".
If nobody will/can do it, then whatever price Willet pays is justified (assuming the task is important, enough time is given for people to bid on the bounty, etc).
I just feel like a lot of the problems in creating the source has already been cursorily resolved by Willett already, meaning it'd be very easy for him to post a high bounty and claim it with ease just because he already thought about how to tackle that component before anyone else did. Besides, I'm no software engineer, but doesn't it take a lot of effort to sufficiently describe the "scaffolding" for a program to get someone else to understand exactly what is wanted?
As of right now I'm favoring the "trust Willett to be frugal and thrifty with what he spends the fund for" option and hope that he exercises the best course of action for each step that needs to be solved to get this thing off the ground. Some things he'll be better off doing on his own and others, it would make perfect temporal and financial sense to delegate out. Time should be taken to identify which of the project milestones are which.
Also, as I understand it, it is likely we need as much of the initial funds as we can save to secure the escrow and initial value within Mastercoin, if it helps. Honestly i'm still a bit iffy on the beginning as to how Mastercoin will start trading (I'd appreciate some help understanding on this point!) .
Also, spending on promotional media at this point is frivolous in my humble opinion. It is a pretty good business rule that you don't spend your initial capital on marketing when you don't even have an inkling of a return on investment yet, it is better to rely on word of mouth for now versus using up 1exodus. Now, once we get the source working with no problems, we can risk spending 1exodus on something like marketing, if we think the return on said marketing will be greater than its cost. I think having a video that shows what is possible with Mastercoin, with direct application of the protocol, say, with an easy to understand concept such as dist. betting would be the first great start, and a great way to segue into the other features. Without a direct application available for people to get their hands on, a video would be kind of ineffective in terms of spreading adoption. Perhaps before this happens, an easy-to-use service that utilizes the distributed betting feature should be created. I could see this being contracted out. Ideally, I'd like to see a proportionate return of 1exodus funds to the sending addresses OR preferably, a sort of endowment fund that will see through to accelerating Mastercoin's long term success.
This leads me to think, hear me out on this Willett since I know it's
kind of your project and all: there should be some sort of oversight board with a platform (the more open the better IMO) to discuss the various spending that will need to be conducted throughout this dev and distribution cycle, and veto powers (perhaps limited somehow?) in the case that those vested think a proposal is frivolous and a better route should be sought.. Just something that can facilitate discussion about transparent fund usage before it happens, you know? In my experience, sometimes the creative doers of a group, despite how great their idea is and their acuity in their respective trades, forget the
full business side of the equation and run through too many costs before drying up all their capital, or simply just using capital less than optimally/prematurely. That is my biggest fear. Thoughts?
