[smackfu]

Sounds awesome! I'll put in a bid, then hire the cheapest programmers I can to make it look like I did some work, then of course I'll lose the competition and still get paid for 3 months. Repeat and you have a viable business. And you never need to actually support software after the 3 months is up.

[Osmium]

Well, you wouldn't let anyone enter the process: there'd still have to be an initial filter. After that, presumably promise of much much higher future profits for the full contract and prestige (i.e. the free advertising that would come from having done it) would be sufficient. But it was just an idea anyway.

[smackfu]

My point was mainly that there are plenty of bad actors out there, and any procurement system has to protect against them as a major goal.