From what I understand, the ad revenue from Bitcointalk is currently going to a fund to upgrade the forum software. I think it would be much better spent donating to those developing new Bitcoin clients. Bitcoin has some great projects happening now, but the Satoshi client only has one full-time paid programmer. I think having several paid programmers working on the reference client would be more fitting for a network the size of Bitcoin's.
I'm guessing the ad revenue minus the 25% donated to the moderators and the portion spent on hosting expenses would be enough or close to enough to hire one additional full-time developer, which could make a big difference.
I don't think giving a donation from the forums to the developers if they need it is a bad idea, but I don't think constantly paying the developers would be a good idea. The forums are a place to get together and talk about Bitcoin, its an informal message board, not a hiring agency. The goal is not to centralize, if everything bitcoin starts revolving around the forums, rather than it just being a convient place to chat, problems could occur.
The forum money isn't being spent on anything related to the forums, look around, look at the old post that suggested the upgrade. It's being stored, and will be cashed out slowly by Theymos when the value is high enough, to buy him a nice castle.
There may have been bonuses sent out, but if memory serves correctly, there is edit: ~$9,000,000 in the forum accounts.
Would you mind providing TXIDs to where Theymos is taking BTC out of the forum's fund? (not to mention that Theymos doesn't actually hold most of the coins)
Also, Custom forum software was announced to have started development about a month ago, maybe more, it will take a while, but there will be new forum software. If we are lucky, that "~$9,000,000 in the forum accounts" will be a whole lot more by the time it needs to be spent.
I don't know what the big emphasis is on spending the forum's coins, why must all of the coins be spent? Had they all been spent last year, they would have had far less buying power. The longer the coins sit, the more buying power the forums has for upgrades. Why must it all be spent immediately if not sooner?
