I just noticed a comment near the end of issue 24969 related to the scarcity of developer resources, and it got me thinking about how developer resources are allocated.
I think the current prioritization is very good considering the complexity of the process, but it could possibly be improved by adding a bounty system. Currently, the vote system is a very democratic process, but it would be nice to "lobby" for an issue by committing a financial incentive for an issue to be implemented. There are individuals as well as organizations that would be willing to pay for a feature to be fixed/implemented. I realize that some might view adding a bounty system as adding complexity without comparable rewards, but it could help to pay for developer resources that might not otherwise be available. Things are complicated by the fact that some developer resources are already funded by commercial organizations such as Sun and Novell. However, I believe that a set of rules could be created to address this. I'll explain what I think would be some fairly reasonable rules. An independent developer (defined by a developer that isn't currently employed to contribute to OOo), would simply receive the full bounty promised for each issue that they fix/implement. A company that contributes developer resources would receive half (some fraction-doesn't need to be half) of the bounty promised for each issue that one or more of their developers fixes/implements, and the other half would be distributed among all developers employed by that company to work on OOo (a bonus of sorts). The first working patch would qualify for the full bounty as long as the patch doesn't break other parts of OOo nor causes obvious interference with future plans. With these rules, there would be more incentive for a company to contribute developer resources, and there would be more incentive for individuals to contribute time and code. I admit that I don't understand all issues related to the development of OOo, but I would like to see the pace of development increase.
