Ciao Magnus,
I don't know if we can easily do that. I don't know if it's just in Sweden
or if it's a EU-wide thing, but I think it's EU-wide. But i you cannot
prove that you are a legal organisation as well, you end up basically being
employed by PGEU in this case, which means that we have to pay a bunch of
taxes and stuff. And the amount of paperwork to deal with is just insane...
I guess it all depends on international agreements between the contributor's country (and jurisdicial form) and Postgres Europe's country, in this case France.
I would assume that PGEU gathers money from sponsorships and decides how to spend that money (which is a different issue). Buying code from developers could be an activity. I would assume that in EU, VAT is not an issue. I do not know with Russia, but I assume that taxes should be paid by each contributors individually at the end of the year - not on the single contract. In any case, a professional advisor is needed.
In general PGEU could commission a feature development to a developer or a group (again, I do not want to consider for the moment the way to handle this - which is a completely different problem), the developer invoices PGEU, PGEU pays. :)
As an alternative, PGEU could setup a "shelf" of proposed features on the website, and let "companies" buy it directly.
For instance:
1) Developer 1 says: I am willing to do this and I want 5k euro (gross) for that.
2) PGEU posts this offer on the website in a dedicated area saying that companies can sponsor that feature for 5k + X euro (X euro is decided by the board and is the price for the company banner on the website shelf for the period of development + 1 year after the completion)
3) The company that sponsors that:
* gets in touch with the developer 1 and organises the contract for 5k euro
* pays another X euro to PGEU as a donation/sponsorship which puts up a banner on the shelf saying that company X is sponsoring this feature and allows the company to show a PG code sponsor on their web page
Of course this is just a rough idea, which needs a detailed analysis and discussion within - at least - PGEU direction.
Ciao,
Gabriele