Adaptation for Free Software funding?

[David Hilvert]

Michael,

Have you considered adapting your algorithms for allocations of funds for Free
Software development?  Even (or perhaps especially) in the case of very large
projects (e.g., Ubuntu), it seems that there isn't a very good means for
allocating funds.

More specifically, it seems that the most troublesome bugs in bug databases are
bugs for which some other project is responsible, and, even in the case that
one particular user wished for a fix, it wouldn't be very obvious who that user
should pay.  (This is the case even for small projects.)

Given the overhead required for determining who should be paid, it is perhaps
not very surprising that individual users would rarely bother to satisfy the
Free Software ideal of hiring someone to fix their problem.  Businesses, of
course, will often have someone on hand, and so we see companies effectively
funding Free Software development.

But it need not be so, I think, if effort expended toward finding an efficient
means of resolving a bug could be shared (perhaps via encoding in a trust
network or some such) among many affected users, rather than requiring
independent research on the part of everyone affected by some particular bug.

Such an approach could be advantageous even in the case of small projects; in
particular, it seems to provide an elegant solution in the case that a primary
developer ceases development, and furthermore allows developers to focus their
efforts and specialize (as those interested in different areas can direct funds
to whatever developer is willing to satisfy their requirements).

Thoughts?