[One (M7) General] electronical:
There is some growing disagreement mixed with some valid arguments being thrown into this thread recently about XDA not being a "paid development" forum. After some thought, i have come to understand and agree that no true XDA developer would contribute here with the incentive of getting paid, except as a means of donation, which is a completely different concept altogether. From what i've observed on XDA, the donation idea is widely accepted but only when the project itself is already done and freely available for everyone to use - and only then people donate to show their appreciation after using whatever the developer has already created to help them. In this thread, i think we're going about it the other (likely wrong) way - it's like we're donating in advance for a project that doesn't even have any developer/s yet, which basically means that we're paying upfront for development based on what we need and trying to lure developer by tempting them through greed. Don't get mad at me for saying this. I am just like all you - i'm dying in anticipation to have S-OFF, but i think we should stop for a minute and rethink about how we're going about this whole endeavour with respect to the devs out here. XDA devs do what they do out of passion (i have never seen and will probably never see any kind of software here that require payment before allowing access or download), although the devs put in a hell of a lot of effort and time into their projects.

New Suggestion: Since we've already exceeded $1k bounty, we could put up a notice in the first post and wait (or ask around) for any interested and talented developers if they would agree to receive an S-OFF card, which we would pay using the bounty accumulated and have it mailed to the developer. We need to make it clear that the Java card will be sent to the developer without any guarantee expected from the dev and that the dev will not be harassed or pressured into delivering S-OFF. Although, we would certainly appreciate a little feedback on the development progress every now and then.

We need $1299 to buy the lower-priced S-OFF card. Here's the link: http://forum.gsmhosting.com/vbb/f35/worlds-first-htc-s-off-card-1599539/. I never bought from that site, so i cannot personally vouch for it, but maybe there are other sites where we can order the card, like eBay, from a top-rated trusted seller, etc.

If the developer is able to reverse-engineer the code in that card, we would all be able to enjoy S-OFF. I'm suggesting this new approach as i've slowly come to realize that throwing money around isn't a sure thing in order to push development towards a specific goal here on XDA. I'm not saying that the bountry idea won't work. I hope it does. But ethically, by XDA's not-for-profit development principles, we could use that bounty money to enable a capable developer (or team of developers) to have an S-OFF Java card to work with, if that would help to bring the unlock. Judging from the XDA's point of view, i think they might prefer to get the hardware to work with, rather than show up in this thread as volunteer to win the cash prize, and then be possibly looked down upon by the rest of their dev peeps. But i could be wrong. :o