2) I think that is up for the person who has to make the choice of deciding between longer-term commitment and the possible awesome rewards at this end of the rainbow.
You're obviously holding a double standard: why does the burden of responsibility fall on someone who wants to make a longer-term commitment, but the person who works for a bounty is blameless? Your personal prejudices are starting to show through.
You posit we scare away developers because we don't offer salaries. How do we even justify giving a newcomer a salary if they have had nothing to show for it before?
When someone applies for a full-time job, he most likely will submit a resume, demonstrating his experience, his skills, etc.. Are you suggesting that a resume is worthless? If the system of hiring full-time employees based on their previous experience were as uncertain and hare-brained as you make it out to be, then one would think that companies which follow such a procedure would face catastrophic results all the time!
Your counter-argument has nothing to do with whether we scare away developers. You have failed to actually engage with that point.
It's a risk that is made irrelevant when we have bounties for clear-cut criteria, which is true for developing the spec implementation.
Your attitude seems inconsistent: you want to avoid the risk of missing out on talent by not hiring full time developers, but you don't want to avoid the risk of missing out on talent by only offering bounties. It would be good if you could explain how you reconcile this contradiction.
Salaries add unnecessary complexity and questions to be answered that you do not have with bounties.
That salaries add complexity doesn't mean that that complexity is unnecessary. Indeed, it is disconcerting to see that a member of the board would let the simplicity of one option determine his opinion so completely, when it has been argued that the simple option gravely endangers the project.