[rv77ax]

(not the best one, but just some thought)

a website that allow FOSS community to pay up developers based on community request. basic goal : to speed up FOSS development.

i.e: let just say that user A want to donate $100 to pay any developer to create a 3D driver for X card. Later, user B want it to and increase the pot $150, and so on, and so on. At some time, some developers take a request and developing it, publish it and take the money. As a profit, 5% of the pot will be taken by the website.

So this website basically functioned as a mediator between FOSS user and FOSS developer.

[ErrantX]

I posted a quite similar idea (though mine had some charity donation aspects too it) here some time ago and the final consensus was that in an ideal world it would be great.

But in actually fact it wouldn't get much by the way of serious pledges and it probably is more off putting for the developers.

(I still think it is a good idea though; and sorry cant find a link to the old thread)

EDIT: found it, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=682450

Actually my idea was more different than I remember :P (sorry). Your is a better approach to the problem.

[jackowayed]

I'm almost done with something that's basically that. probably will post it here in 1.5-2 weeks.

[GeneralMaximus]

This is a nice way to speed up development. The Haiku community already has something like this in place, with bounties at HaikuWare.com and an annual Haiku Code Drive (which is similar to GSoC).

So far, this has worked extremely well.

[I_I]

This is seriously a fantastic idea. Could really focus development on a number of fronts.

[_3ex7]

Something like this exists already... http://micropledge.com/