For vendor-specific software, the responsibility to pay should fall on the vendor. When it comes to open-source software, a foundation funded by the vendors who rely on it for core productivity would be ideal.
For high-quality vulnerabilities, especially those that can demonstrate exploitability without any prerequisites (e.g., zero-click remote jailbreaks), the bounties should be on par with those offered at competitions like Pwn2Own. :)
The Punchline: Microsoft pays $10m for vulnerabilities like the kind used to exploit SolarWinds and the Azure token audience vulnerability.
The Status Quo: Thousands of people pay CrowdStrike a total of billions of dollars, in exchange for urgent patching when vulnerabilities become known.
Okay, do you see what I am getting at? On the one hand, if you pay bug bounties, the bugs get fixed, and they sure seem expensive. But if you look into how much money is spent on valueless security theatre, it is a total drop in the bucket. But CrowdStrike hires security researchers!So what should the prices really be? For which vulnerabilities? The SolarWinds issue is probably worth more than $10m, if people are willing to pay 100x more to CrowdStrike for nothing.