I wouldn’t worry about a change in direction because:
i) Most of the development activity goes into OH2 addons and ESH and that’s provided for free from the contributors
ii) The use of BountySource is up to the end-users and the developers (it cannot be prohibited)
iii) The first OH bounty was posted 3 years ago and remained open/unclaimed for 2 years
iv) The only change that this post brings is the integration of github OH repos with BountySource and the reminder from @Kai that everyone can use it.
This is a good thing. Personally, I won’t be using Bounties but I support the idea.
I don’t believe that there will be a shift in the way that contributors progress the projects.