Ok I found the secrete to compiling the bitcoin-qt and your groupcoin version. Not sure what you are using but in Ubuntu we use qtcreator with this you just open the *.pro file and hit the build botton. Not sure why no one could tell me about this tool as I normaly use the command line to compile with. I'm sure there are command line methods also that should be easy enuf to document in the doc section of your code. After that I noted that there are a lot of differences that I couldn't easily merge my changes into so it will require custom mods. I'm not sure at what state you are in now or what code commitish we should be working from at this time but I would suggest one small step at a time. If it hasn't already been done these are the steps I would start from before adding the more complex licenced minning:
1.modify listen port 51333
2.modify sendto port 51333 ; I had to modify this to prevent from connecting to other running bitcoin that I and others would be running
3.modify AddressVerson=244 ; or to another address header number from 0 - 255 so that you can't send to the wrong version of bitcoin or testnet. I had hoped to add human readable headers to my addresses at some point like weeds_ beer_
4.add rpcport=51332 to config or change as default
5.modify inflation settings but low priority since they won't be changing for years
6.modify pszTimestamp="New York Times 1/Jul/11 page 1, U.S. Will Widen 2 C.I.A. Inquiries Into Jail Deaths" or other you might have chosen
7.modify block_hashMerkleRoot=0xd597477ef4dac6078bebd0240be7da16556ba881f047823791ddc83676d16fde or other you might have chosen
8.modify genesisblock=0x00000004d621bf2f4e8209d56371b456a0181018f9416142c7a7f8a0b6f976fa
9.modify block_nTime=1309517065
10.modify block_nNonce=1109660235
11.modify irc_channel=groupcoin
12.modify irc_address=irc.lfnet.org
Im not sure the changes for dns were added in this version they are using of bitcoin so the irc_address here might need to be an ip address number instead of a name. After these changes are made do a quick test of mining and sending transactions. Make that one of the commitish points.
Next step start working on the licenced minner aditions. Looks like you have some good ideas that at some point should work. But I think you have to move just one step at a time not do all at once. And to stay in sync with what each of you are doing you should all meet on IRC at freenode #groupcoin as I checked it is free.