I was thinking about another feature for the DAO. What if Steemit, Inc or any other busy witness, have a good idea they want to code but have other priorities at the moment.
Can they propose the idea, allowing a random dev on Steem to do it and giving him the rewards instead?
Yes, it's possible, but that involves the proposing party calculating the cost, rather than having the cost set by the party doing the work, so that's more of an example of a bounty-based usage, and it also means that the party doing the work would need to rely on the proposing party to pay them from the funds received (but that could be done fairly safely, especially if the agreement is to pay them on a recurring basis throughout the proposal's lifetime).