$50.000?
I don't get the amount of cash needed. Not judging, just not understanding. Could someone explain and justify the need for this?
That's not even thinking about all of the service they've provided to our community already.
I would argue it's on the low side, I sincerely hope he'll go over it.
1. http://blog.zenspider.com/blog/2012/09/ohmygems.html
2. https://twitter.com/garybernhardt/status/388758868559290368
$100/hr is a very conservative estimate for an hourly rate for a senior level Ruby engineer that can read and understand shell code and implement clean, well documented code.
500 hours also seems very reasonable given that they'd be rewriting 20,000 lines of Bash. Not an easy task.