The problem with bugs is they can have a widely varying complexity... it's a lot harder to turn a profit that way (either the requester pays a lot since it turn

The problem with bugs is they can have a widely varying complexity... it's a lot harder to turn a profit that way (either the requester pays a lot since it turned out to be hard, or the solver gets a bad deal if it's fixed price). Plus it seems very inefficient - you have to page the whole surrounding program into your head at once to understand what the bug is doing, and then you can't use any of that information for the next bug. So although I don't dispute your point about information not having much perceived value, the bug-fixing thing seems much harder to make profitable.