This is something I've been thinking about a lot. Most of my ideas have been variations of creating a scholarship fund where interest from the initial investmen

This is something I've been thinking about a lot. Most of my ideas have been variations of creating a scholarship fund where interest from the initial investment goes to pay for continued development on a specific project. The big question though is how to run the investment without it being wasted on people aren't helping the project at all. Some notes (I'm planning on eventually writing a blog post on this subject): - You probably need to pay people differently depending on whether they're the maintainer or a minor contributor - There needs to be a balance of power between users and the maintainer. A simple balance could be, the maintainer is dictator for life (or until they lay down the mantle) but compensation is based on number of users. - Maybe compensation is done on a per-feature basis, e.g., users put a bounty on a feature and the interest money doubles that bounty.