Hi, I think the discussions about the technical implementation of our donation system and whether or not to pay developers using the funds are relatively orthogonal. Updating our current system is a good idea IMO regardless of what comes out of the latter discussion.
If Carl thinks that CiviCRM is not a feasible solution from a technical POV he has my full support for leading the work on a replacement system. I would be cautious about creating a system that allows targeted donations for specific features/requests. I don't want the e.V. to be in a position where work is done/prioritized because it brings in money. Not having this kind of money-driven-development is a great strength of community-driven open source projects. We have a list of possible providers for such requests already (disclosure: I work for a company on that list). Cheers Nico
