I don't see what stops you from adding a bounty for a specific compiler feature, and then asking everyone interested to add to the bounty.
You're right, there is nothing stopping me from doing that. What I seem to have missed (if it exists) is a very obvious/visible list of features people have offered a bounty for, thus enabling other people to add themselves and their bounty offer to a particular feature.
What @Zoran pointed to is a list but, IMO, it is not exactly very "visible" nor does it invite others to "opt-in" (or even make that easy/obvious)
Well, first of all you could check yourself if the desired feature would ever stand a chance.
Absolutely!. That's why I mentioned removing limitations on "variants" in a forum thread. I did see a very modest amount of interest from other forum members but, the subject didn't even get a comment from any of the developers. Personally, not only I think it would be very nice, I find it surprising that it has not been implemented yet but, interest seem to be lukewarm at best which, in turn, doesn't do much for my desire to offer a bounty to see it implemented.
Once a feature is deemed "potentially ok", you can go starting a bounty process (through what ever means)
I couldn't agree anymore with that. Again, referring to the "variant" thread, it was essentially ignored by the developers which led me to forget that idea.
... been payed [edit: paid] even ...
your English is good, that's just my 4 keystrokes (excluding punctuation and keyword) to help make it better.
But as Martin wrote and I concur: do not start implementing a feature *before* you researched the likelihood it will be included, usually on fpc-devel.
... and I concur too.
It seems to me that, even though there is somewhat of a mechanism in place, it really isn't very visible nor is it inviting for others to add themselves to those interested in a particular feature.
Basically, I think it would be nice, not to mention potentially much more effective and rewarding for the developers, to have something that is very visible (like the bugtracker for instance) where those interested can add themselves and their bounty in support of a particular feature.