I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to setup a simple mechanism for bounty-driven feature requests.
Here is the overview of the idea:
- There is a list of features and idea requested by community of users
- The development team suggests a quote how much potentially a particular feature would cost
- Users who are willing to support development of a feature can donate amount they wish
- Donated amount is added to total budget for particular bounty (not for the one sack for all feature requests)
- There would be a list of open bounties with status of budget and list of already closed bounties including total budget collected which allowed to develop particular feature.
- Optionally, donators by names or nicknames can be listed next to each bounty
Simply, users can donate to features they are interested in.
This idea works pretty well for may closed source and open source projects.