That may be, but the point is to keep coders coding. The overhead cost of delegating fund raising to another person who isn't committing code is worth it.
>, and also gives those middleman organizations that do the funding some measure of power that i feel is also undeserved.
I think that it's often very deserved if the organization is well managed. If programmers can keep their hands on keyboards instead of rattling a tin cup then I think it's a better solution than the dual license.
On the other hand, it ensures the developer makes enough to keep working on it quite steadily.
Can I develop my proprietary application using the GPL version of PyQt?
Yes, so long as you have purchased the commercial version of PyQt before you distribute your proprietary application for the first time. (Note that this is different to the terms of the Qt commercial license.)
I think the dual licensing method would extract the most value and give the most of said value back to the developers.