I like the idea, and even though it is slightly against the open source ‘grain’ so to speak, I believe that if UK retailers want new features on Magento quickly the best way is to encourage development is through finanial contributions.

I think you may however get a conflict of interests, as if I donate £1,000 to the fund and I have my own prioirity as to what extension we should develop then I would be a bit upset if someone who donated £200 to the fund ended up having their extension made first! But maybe there is a way around this?

For that reason I think I may be slightly hesitant to donate, but I would be very willing to make a development server available for this project if their was enough community interest.

Cheers
Michael

UK developers who contribute UK specific extensions can always recover their time/cost by posting their extensions as commercial in Magento Connect.  Then UK store owners will pay for only the extensions they absolutely need and developers will be compensated for their efforts according to demand.  Just a suggestion.

Didnt know you could do commerial connect extensions, sounds good.

Regarding the above, I’d be willing to share what I have written in Magento in future if others are willing. I’d be interested in getting some ppl’s IM details as I beleive it would be very beneficial to establish a group of contacts who are instantly contactable for programming help on extensions, I know from personal experiance I am half the time pulling my hair out due to not knowing what the hell is going on

If anyone fancies it, mail me any IM details, I’ll do the same