"Free and open might be a slight issue, best license may be OGA-by or CC-by license types. its open but not so open where someone could buy it or receive as exclusive content, only to sell or upload for free elsewhere which would defeat the purpose of the thing. some restrictions may be needed, but i think for the sake of funding the site as a whole, an exemption could be made, but yeah i get a possible conflict of goal of OGA. Failing this idea, i propose that an OGA account is created on itch, where artists can submit assets for a bundle, and the money raised can go straight to OGA admin. Assets sold under any license terms but an annoucement saying all proceeds go to help the running costs of OGA. Technically speaking it doesn't have to be an OGA account, that way its not in a conflict free opensource assets that OGA promotes. :)"

This sounds good. As stated I would be supporting such an effort with works. This other account and the ways of a trustworthy submitting should be promoted prominently on the frontpage. If funds like this can buy a professional individual to create a great UI Design for this site and someone who could take the time to implement a frontend from that it might even be better than the community effort in these regards.

I also think a continuation of dragging the usage of the older implementation because of the fear of data-loss just enforces the problem over time. It is an issue that can not be solved without starting something more clean and modern as chasersgaming stated.

I myself could only help in a very small way, which I gladly provide, but could sadly not take any lead of such a web improvement project. With graphics and funding however it is a whole other topic since I do that on the daily.