In principle this sounds like a good idea to me, but I wonder who's doing
the reviewing, who's doing the approving, and whether it would in fact work
as you describe.  Would the community enforce the standards you describe?
By some kind of informal agreement?

Simply posting to the dev list to open up a dialogue concerning your module will yield a discussion that will probably lean towards a yes or no. So yes, it would be by some kind of informal agreement. Who would give permission to create the project? I would say the same ppl who grant CVS access. It would be a matter of incrementing a counter for the user.
 
On the other hand, the initial approval makes sure that the developer has a
useful and sound contribution to make.  After that they're initiated into
the community and its standards, and I think it's reasonable to expect them
to continue to abide by those standards.

I'm sure we all agree that the module boom is caused by those same developers that were initiated. I'm not trying to avoid duplicates or anything here, I'm simply laying out an option that would force highlighting a potential project before it's magically created without anyone's knowledge or consent.

I tend to agree with Greg here. And will add that while duplication
may be a problem, the answer should not be to make it harder for
people to contribute, but to make it easier to figure out why you
should use one module over another. It may be a harder way to solve
the original problem, but please don't make it harder than it already
is for people to contribute.

I don't disagree with Greg and I don't see this as an additional barrier at all, rather than creating a project in the dark without anyone's knowledge I simply have to post to dev first to get approval. Is that a barrier? The only person objecting to this would be someone who doesn't want to inform the community before creating his project, this is exactly the person we want to stop by enforcing permission per project rather than one permission per unlimited # of projects.

Also note that this change is a very simple one that would require minimum effort with huge benefits, enabling a module such as node limit for the project content type, and creating a little script that would set its value to the current # of projects per user could be all that is required. For CVS admins it's a matter of incrementing the counter for a user if his module suggestion gets approved on the dev list.

AA