I guess there is no need for a Foundation or a Body. There should just be an address (or addresses) for tipping core devs. Many would contribute a bit (myself included) and people with vested interest or big holdings in Bitcoin would do it too, as it is to their best interest.
The rest is up to miners and nodes. Core devs release updates, and the users decide.
I don't know if I agree with this. In order to attract and keep talent you need to insure there is a least a minimum amount of job security and vested interest in maintaining an open source repository. I don't know if our ecosystem is large and diverse enough to have enough competing and a diversity of private companies funding core development at this stage.
What you are suggesting is essentially the model that the libbitcoin/unsystem implementation is following and while I fully support such endeavor, one has to be honest that it still needs a lot of work and development to mature and the lack in funding and organization is hurting this from being accomplished. Tips alone don't seem to be enough.
Firstly, instead of having a group of people deciding the future of Bitcoin, I believe a forum would be better. Let's take simple machines forum as an example. With a bit of tweaking, we could add a "New feature" section. When a new topic is created, a new poll is also simultaneously created.
At the end of the month, we would all be able to have a head-to-head and select 10 new features, which will be added to a list of updates to be made.
Secondly, developers need to have a verified account linked to their Bitcoin forum account.
Every year, they would make an appeal to the community, and the community would consequently vote for their pay that year. Once this has been completed, an address to fund the developers would be listed. After they have been paid, any additional payments are carried to the next year.
Finally, funding Bitcoin related projects. This would be achieved by have a Bitcoin address, which is openly displayed and recognised by everyone. It would be controlled by everyone, simultaneously being controlled by no one. Like paying developers, if a project requires funding, they would need to create a new topic and compete head-to-to for the top 10 winning spot each month.
For this to effectively work, each member (user) would be required to have over 100 comments on the forum, which would prevent spamming. I have weighed all the other options available, and I believe this would be better welcomed by the community, instead of a body of rich, opportunistic representatives. Projects which require funds would have a 5 day window each month to create the necessary topic, which contains the organisations name, Bitcoin address, images and the topic content.
