[kwlug-disc] the business model for open source

[Kyle Spaans]

As a tangential (and possibly thread-hijacking question --  I'll be glad to take
this into a new thread if someone wants) question:

Has anyone seen or heard of a company/organization/individual hiring a
contractor to work on some FLOSS code for them? What I'm imagining is:

FLOSS project X is well used and well liked by company Y, but X is old,
unmaintained, or it's developers aren't interested in feature Z that Y wants.
Therefore Y hires a contractor to work on X for a while and implement
feature Z for them.

(OK, it's probably more likely that the projects's developers would say
"Oh, hey cool, you can pay for Z if you want it that much." -- but for
some reason this sprang to my mind.)