This is a idea I do support, although I would suggest that the new foundation should be registered as a non profit. Donations will only be used towards Bitcoin projects which benefit the community. The books would need to be open and every part of the foundation would need to be transparent.
Some key problems which it would face:
- Who would decide who wins the election
- Anyone associated with a Bitcoin should be disallowed or allowed to run for election
- Who owns the domain and the non profit organisation?
I would think that the community would elect who become board members of the Bitcoin foundation, however how would this be done? Most votes? Most votes could be manipulated by using such services as Tor to register many votes.
Allowing Bitcoin business holders could cause a few problems such as conflict of interest. But, not allowing business holders defeats the " Anyone can run for election" statement.
The foundation would have to register as a non profit therefore would require someone to actually register it as a non profit, therefore the person who does that will always be part of the Bitcoin foundation, unless the person is willing to not be part of the board and has simply registered it as a non profit organisation and owns the domain. That being said we would also need someone to run the election process and assign new members their positions.
I wouldn't introduce donations to become "lifetime members" because what's the point of that? That's just encouraging people to donate for no reason other than to get status of being part of the foundation.
Another question is, why does Bitcoin need a foundation at all? No one owns Bitcoin therefore, no one should be representing it's community.
My personal opinion on the matter is that we don't need a Bitcoin foundation to represent us as a community. That's not how Bitcoin works no one controls Bitcoin and no one represents Bitcoin. Satoshi is the one that created it but, he doesn't represent us because that's not why he created it. What if they make a bad decision it will reflect on the Bitcoin community. No one likes to be controlled and to be spoken for because we are all our own person. What makes the foundation to be correct in it's decision making process? Nothing, because they would take the option with the most votes which could not be the necessary the best decision, as well as some members of the Bitcoin community will disagree with any decision that is made by anyone.
I won't be supporting or claiming that any Bitcoin foundation represents the Bitcoin community even if they do achieve great things.