Mind that my suggestion only relates to coders that release their work for free.
This thread is not related to any commercial addons. Or at least it was not my intention for it to be, when I posed the suggestion.
I think part of the problem with any incentive program would be properly defining coders.
Is someone who released a couple of 10 minute mods on vb.org eligible for the discount? How would XF keep track of who is and isn't legit? How would they deal with people submitting work as their own that belongs to someone else?
There are lots of people on vb.org listed as "coders" who have never spent more than an hour or two on coding in their lives, and a lot of people who steal other peoples work, or rip off another mod by taking code from an old version and just changing a couple of lines for the new one, and because the coder is no longer active, it never gets removed - how would XF avoid scams like that when deciding who gets these benefits?
It seems to me like it would be a real minefield to offer free licenses/discounts etc on a large scale for something like this, just due to the logistics of it. Perhaps Kier and Mike and the guys will offer versions to prolific coders on an individual basis, but to be honest I don't think XF is going to have any trouble attracting modders - especially since from what i've seen, Kier and Mike have had modability as a core concept for XF from day one.
Although my company produces both free and professional mods, every coder i know personally (even those who only make free mods) has expressed an interest in switching to XF. Just the idea of a fresh new system, a place without all of the entiltlement and the sometimes ridiculous moderation at vb.org (from personal experience, Moderators over there will just ignore your PM if they are wrong about something or it's something they don't want to deal with [Should point out here Paul M is an exception to that, i've never had any problems getting a reply from him, just in case anyone took that as a dig]) and how approachable the entire XF team are and how open the entire process has been is massively attractive to them.
To be honest if people need cajoling to come over, then it's possible the place will be better without them IMHO.