The reason for the bounty is to see if Sidhujag's Daemon makes devcoin blocks that the old clients accept. We just need a single block for that. If it does, then we can make Sidhujag's the official client and archive the old one.
you need more than a single block. the new client needs to run side by side with the old client for a period of time and a number of blocks to ensure the chains don't diverge. there is a significant amount of testing needed by a pool operator here so they deserve a large bounty. not to mention the risk if the devcoin damon causes a bitcoin block to be lost. that's $25,000 that the pool operator would owe its miners.
has the new client been tested using 'bitcoin in a box' style testing? that is a closed network for testing merge mining and normal mining.