Developers will get 100 points that can be redeemed for US$100 for each incident that they resolve. Most incidents are expected to take less than four hours to resolve; if the problem takes longer, the developers can seek additional reward points.

The program will especially help open-source enterprise customers who need help but don't want to post requests on message boards for fear that competitors or others will see what they are using inside their operations, Weins said. Instead, they can seek help anonymously because the payment points for the assistance will come from OpenLogic and don't have to come directly from the customers.

The OpenLogic Expert Community now has experts representing more than 50 leading open-source projects, including Apache HTTP Server, Ant, Hibernate, MyFaces, Spring, Struts and Tomcat.

Michael Goulde, an analyst with Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., said the reward program is innovative and "nervy."

OpenLogic will have to carefully monitor and manage the program to be sure that its customers' needs are met, he said. "This may require a discipline that some of these [open-source developers] aren't used to," Goulde said. In the end, the company will have to figure out if the "cost of managing this exceeds the cost of hiring people."