Posting from my phone, real quickly all, I'd like to point out the current devs have already earned a substantial amount of money...likely enough to live off for at least a few months/years/decades... They do not need the extra advantage, and it is up to them how much time they wish to allocate between the rest of their lives and Mastercoin considering the future reward. I do not support an ongoing salary for them until some sort of objectives are laid out for such a salary that cannot be better accomplished via bounties.
If you think that the size of the bounties was disproportionate to the amount of work the devs did, this would indicate that the size of the bounties was not carefully enough considered. I would only point out that whether you're right or not doesn't in-itself mean that salaries are either good or bad.
A little while ago we hired a PR firm, which was meant, in part, to find developers. As far as I know, that has not come to anything yet, and so I am proposing that rather waiting for the PR firm to bring developers to us, we find developers that whose work we like, and whom we think would be a good fit for Mastercoin. Anyone who wants to nominate a developer should provide an explanation as to why she's a good fit, and also provide some examples of her code, experience etc. (a link to a Github page is good).
It is this kind of transparent, democratic hiring process which is necessary for Mastercoin to succeed, and which, in my view, has really been missing thus far.
Whoever is interested in this idea should post on the following thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=351077 . This would of course be a good place for updates regarding the PR firm's search for developers.