Jacob, there look like about 20 or more programmers on that page. At even $100k per programmer, isn't that about $2.4 million? And isn't the number much more than that given that you are among the most skilled engineers?
* "Even 100k" implies that you think a six figure salary is reasonable for programmers. This is true in some rarefied echo chambers likethe Bay Area where programmer salaries are overinflated, but it's far from a universal The majority of our committers don't live near San Francisco. Actually, I think most live outside the US these days. I don't believe the median salary of a Django committers is 100k -- though for my fellow committers' sake I hope I'm wrong :)
* I only wish "being a core Django committer" was some magic "Get a Great Job Paying Six Figures Card". No good hiring manager assumes that "has a Django commit bit" translates to "among the most skilled engineers"; I only wish I could pull down "much more than" 100k based solely on my Django status. It's certainly a good time to be a Django dev, but while being contributor might help you get your foot in the door, it won't land you a salary increase over your peers.
* None of us get paid to work on Django anywhere close to full time. We get paid to do other things; we're lucky if we get a few hours a week to hack on Django as a side project. This again shows that our value in the salary marketplace isn't linked to our willingness to volunteer time to Django.
* Finally, this whole silly exercise assumes it would take "a year or two" of ALL of our time to get Django onto Python 3. That's laughable: it's mostly done already with perhaps a couple of man-months of activity. There's nowhere near 20 programmer-years worth of work; suggesting such is simply insane. Toss me that 100k you're bandying about so easily and I'll have it done by May :)
Considering merge with trunk will probably be done shortly after 1.4 I don't think he'll be getting his money's worth ;)