The idea behind this is to research and experiment with "smart contract" funding for open source and free software.
- Allow less-known developers / projects to earn the public's trust ("cautious funding" — helping them build a reputation of being able to deliver; mechanisms may vary. could be based on bounties [see below] or funds release confirmations if bounties are not suitable for any reason... or something else entirely)
- Allow direct organization/person funding (simple token transfer)
- Allow funding specific goals (bounties)
- Allow branding [sub]tokens for a specific project (bragging, voting, other kinds of rights)
- Allow continuous support pledges (recurring payments)
- Allow nominees to exchange tokens for the amount they were originally bought for (backed by ETH, the funding is deposited through an ICO, or a series of offerings)
- Allow project maintainers and developers to publish their expenses in IPFS and refer to hashes of the receipts
It feels like there's something that can be done with ETH or the blockchain here, but I'm not sure what.
I have doubts about bounties for open source though. It's tried many times before with fiat currency and it hasn't worked out. At best, you get random feature requests, way underpriced. Hardly anyone is aware the bounties even exist. Even when they do know it exists, most users can't make an informed judgment about what to fund. It's not a great way to fund a long-term roadmap, even though it could provide some cash.
However, all the previous bounty programs were third-party. Maybe it would be different if there was an Open Collective type organization which embedded bounties deeply into their roadmap. It might work for some situations, like if you had an open source project that was used by many large companies as part of their infrastructure.
Coins offer the promise of decentralization & maybe unlimited funds. But coin traders would want to "invest" in something and somehow achieve a "return". But then you're just reinventing capitalism. And capitalism doesn't work very well when you're talking about nonexcludable benefits. As far as I know, there's no reliable way to capture concrete "returns" without excluding some people from the benefits.
IDEA: On the other hand, governments are all about nonexcludable benefits! But, they don't know what to fund. Maybe they could pay into a big fund of OSS coins that's somehow controlled by knowledgeable people. Or allocate coins to organizations in their jurisdiction, and qualify projects if they use appropriate open source licenses. And then just rely on the coin markets to ensure it goes to the right places? Basically a SR/ED coin, maybe exchangeable for tax credits, that you can only use to fund OSS?