Agaric Wants an 'Anybody Wants' Drupal Project Funding Module

In affirmation of an excellent post by Daniel (dahacook), Need more structure and funding model... Agaric (well, Ben) posted this:

I applaud Walt's work in promoting projects needed financing and projects needing developers, and I see this [Daniel's] idea as a way to build on it.

...

1. Letting people put money up for specific needs will give people who have that fabled itch to scratch – but without the time or Drupal experience to scratch – actually do something about getting that itch scratched: namely, say (and put money behind their words) "I want this feature / bug fix / functionality / module".
2. The Drupal Association could hold the money (and skim interest off it!) until the financed improvement is made
3. In the vast majority of cases the money would go to a developer or developers at the independent approval of the people who put up the money initially. (It would have to go to people who signed up to work on the request, to avoid someone redirecting the cash to a cousin at the last second.) Some appointed board (or democratic sample) could make a quick decision (including to have Drupal Association just keep the money, or split the difference) in the minority of cases where disagreements arise.
4. If not enough money is raised or work isn't done for some other reason, the Drupal Association can offer to refund it at a certain point-- but most people will re-assign it to another project, rather than cashing out.
5. This should be integrated into Drupal.org as much as possible, as in the issue queue and projects' pages. Two Summer of Code projects will be working in this area, Project quality metrics system and Extend Case Tracker Module, so now is a good opportunity to work in this area.
6. The same system can be used to support needed core changes, of course, although in this case its more likely to take the form of Dries or someone else with a bit of core developer cred pointing to an issue, saying this needs support, and letting us freeloaders give back. Also, people could make general donations at any time which some Drupal Association appointed group (or maybe someday a broad democratic vote) could direct.

Agaric Design Collective isn't raking in money yet, but we're already contributing to the Drupal Association. We want to build into our rates both general support for Drupal (and CiviCRM) and money we set aside for specific development we see as important.

That includes money or coding help to create software to make this decentralized, targeted donation system possible!

~ ben, member, Agaric Design Collective, http://AgaricDesign.com