This a big problem we have to do something about somehow. There are a lot of rather big libraries that takes so much time to develop, that it is unrealistic that people can do them in their spare-time. (unicode, xml, database seems to be the most needed right now)
Right, and some of those: certainly Unicode is going to be very time intensive, and require ongoing support as new Unicode versions are produced etc.
I imagine that many companies would be willing to pay, say 100 USD, to support eg. a unicode library. That is sufficiently low for me to be able to persuade my boos, for example.
If we have some kind of estimate of how expensive it would be to develop the library, it might turn out that 100-200 willing companies would be enough fully fund the initial development.
As Dave A. says, it creates problems if Boost.org becomes a legal entity accepting money etc. However, I note that OSDL have just started a fellowship fund for FOSS projects, although they're very tied to Linux-related projects. See http://www.osdl.org/lab_activities/fellowship_fund/ I also note that Sourceforge has a project-donation facility that we've never turned on. I guess one solution would be for individual users to start their own SF project, turn on the donation option and then request funds.... but it requires a fair amount of trust on all sides. John.