I am finding Ubuntu 9.04 to be a mostly complete replacement for Windows. There are exceptions exceptions however that require me to continue access to Windows.

Does anyone know if there has been any effort on the part of Linux users to commission the creation of software to enable the use of things such as Mobipocket, an IPAQ etc.?

I'm thinking that if there was enough interest in the community that for a few dollars contribution each we could get someone to make software packages to order.

If you are willing to pay a programmer, they will write anything you want. I am not sure what the question is here. If you really wanted to, you could personally pay a freelance programmer to write any application you wanted.

The question is, do you really want it bad enough to come up with the cash? Or per your group idea, can you get enough people interested to donate the required funds.

Of course, it is better to have somebody who truly has an interest in the product or project to donate his time to writing the software, rather than paying somebody for a one-off assignment they won't update or manage after the fact.

Maybe a software bounty is what your looking for. Where a group of people put money down do employ a freelance programmer to design and write code. I don't know how effective this is but I would imagine you'd need to ensure code clarity and keep a copy of design documents. Ensure that this is all published under an agreed licence of the people who put money together http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Software_bounty