[kbenson]

No, it just means that monetary compensation is no longer the largest, or in this case of any consideration. There are other costs, such as time and effort, but there are also other profits, such as reputation and personal satisfaction. Compensation doesn't bottom out zero, it can also go negative. In this specific case, if there were two such people bidding against each other for the 18F contract, one or both of them might have been willing to pay a few dollars for the privilege of working on the project. I got a feeling from this post that the pair of them that did this contract would have had little problem throwing $10 at 18F for the chance to do the project.