A couple of days ago I mentioned to Prokoudine an idea that probably is worth to discuss. It's a known fact that bounties never worked for Inkscape and GIMP, but that doesn't mean necessarily that money wouldn't help. What is needed is to find a different way to use the money that comes from donations and could come from companies (like linux vendors, for instance). This isn't a new idea. It's just a mix of some ideas that already work (crowd funding, GSoC, hacking sprints, etc).
Instead of picking individual feature requests, developers could make a list of targets, following project's roadmap. In that point community (and companies interested) could express their needs and wishes, and project active developers could decide if some of those requests fit with the existing plans. Once a targets lists is created and cleaned up, developers should make an estimation of time and people needed to reach those targets. The idea is to group those targets in small "packs" so it's not too ambitious to expect their completion in a limited period of time. Also in that stage would be good to define if more people than the available is needed, and what upstream projects are connected to the planned goals in order to contact their mantainers and communicate what would be needed and in what timeframe. Once that information is ready and available publicly, then money comes into play. People can start to donate and companies could be contacted to get sponsoring. That money wouldn't be used to pay for features. The idea is to organize a hacking sprint, giving developers a chance to meet and more importantly, companies could lend developers who could benefit from having core and active developers in a common physical space to ask them about project particularities. This would be also a good opportunity to document code and details that could be useful for other developers in the future. I think this could refresh the motivation of existing developers and attract new people, while at the same time it could make companies commit to the development of graphic applications. After all, having quality applications is what free operative systems need to reach more people and be more interesting to users, so this could be a good opportunity for linux vendors.
I know this is just an idea and it making it work it won't be as easy as talking, but at least I'm interested to know what developers and the rest of the community thinks about it. Is it possible? Could it work for projects like Inkscape, GIMP or Scribus?