I recently completed the process to get vetted access in order to create Drupal projects. It's a fairly simple process where you create a sandbox project, create an issue in the Drupal.org Project reviews queue, and once the project has been reviewed and accepted you're granted access to promote the sandbox to a fully-featured Drupal project. This process is in place to educate maintainers of best practices and Drupal standards as well as encourage a high level of quality for projects featured on Drupal.org.