Sadly, developers also have a history of being able to game the system a lot better than sales as well, partially because of the measurement problems pointed out in the article, and such a system usually ends in failure.

Also, the bounty scheme has largely failed in the open source world, perhaps because they bounties never saw $450,000, and I personally doubt the model could be effectively applied to an even smaller team.

Sure, many people would like to have more money, but sadly there is a lot of devwork that is of little 'financial value' that has to be done and that would surely suffer with such a system in place, driving the overall quality lower as it doesn't create a sense of improving the product, instead pushing for being awarded the largest or best bounty.