How do features get into OOo? Ideas for improvements

A few days ago, I posted an entry regarding the priorities for features implementation or in other words "why is a this feature implemented and that one is not". At that time, there were no answers for such a question.

Since that blog entry, Mathias Bauer wrote in GullFOSS an article called "Why all issues are equal but some are more equal than others". I suppose that his blog entry could even be pasted on some page on the wiki in order to keep it somewhere.

Thanks to Mathias, we now have more visibility on the "variables" used to choose which features to implement next. That's a good point.

In order to improve the visibility of the choice, a few more things may be achieved. The aim would be to have a page representing a scoring system, were the issues on the top would be the next ones to be implemented. Currently this is not the case as the scoring system only shows votes. And as Mathias explained it, votes are only one variable between others, thus the issues with the highest number of votes are not necessarily the next ones to be implemented.

The aim of the improvement would be that the "score" would be the reference for the next features to be implemented. So this score should be a sum including variables like:

• complexity of implementation,
• gain for users,
• a developper wants to work on it,
• customers are paying for it,
• ...

Those variables would then need to be added to IssueZilla and the scoring would be a result of a computation including the variables. What do you think?

Note: Those variables would also be useful for other purpose like selecting which issues could be assigned to new developpers (the one with low complexity).