Bitcoin Forum

it just occurred to me that we have this crazy flexibility with this stuff.

insert fry pic "take my money, please"

... Why... Should we?

how do you know some people don't?

maybe some of them would like to work full-time on it?

and besides, couldn't they hire more people with that money? what other open source project even has this possibility!?

i don't. but it just occurred to me that we can do this. like, we can actually boost the productivity of the whole fucking game by... you know, being a little recursive. :-)

All you need to do, Is goto the github repository or wiki, that shows all the developers, find them on the forums here, and see if they have their bitcoin addy posted for donations.

i was thinking more like a wikipedia thermometer.

"we have our fill for this month"

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=92684.0  thats partly why I set this up.

dude, great idea and great work.

It's a legitimate question.  Square has attracted over $200 million dollars in venture capital in the two years since it was launched and is now being used at Starbucks.  Dwolla has also attracted major investors and become a viable alternative to PayPal. 

There are payment systems coming out right and left which are getting serious development funding and merchant adoption, yet there's really no serious money being directed towards solving the issues which create barriers to Bitcoin's acceptance as an alternative, mainstream payment method. People are expected to put time and effort into solving those issues out of idealism, which puts Bitcoin behind the other technologies which are targeting similar markets.

Bitcoin is not "user-friendly" for conventional business at the moment and it's not going to enjoy wide-spread adoption while it's cumbersome to acquire, to store, to spend or to exchange.  It's not going to become user-friendly any time soon unless people are paid to develop solutions.

People are being paid to develop solutions  - they just work for a collection of companies like Mt Gox, BitInstant, Paysisus, BitPay, etc.

That being said community funding of the core developers isn't a bad idea.

This has nothing to do with being "user-friendly" and 100% with the attitude of the core development group:

1) check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koIq58UoNfE
about 1:25 into the clip:

we don't much care if you don't approve of the software we write.

2) utter disregard for the GAAP; check out the old thread

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=93502.0

It just too bad that the juiciest portions were deleted by Maged at the request of Gavin Andresen and Roman Shtylman.

repentance is on the mark.

can we get gavin and the other guys in here to comment on this?

i know that gavin is a self-made man and doesn't need it for himself right now, but that maybe doesn't apply to some people he'd like to have involved, or others on the team right now.

and if there's such a thing as mob rule or voting: the first non-core thing that should happen is that a UX/UI designer is hired to improve the aesthetics of the satoshi client. :-)

remember that gavin has said elsewhere on this forum, that they just see the satoshi client as a proof-of-concept, nothing more. i think the future is in the alt. clients, and i guess that opinion is shared with them.

still, it IS the first one people download from bitcoin.org and that should either change or the damn thing should be nicer to use.

money!

The devs aren't the only people who can come up with things like ways to compress the blockchain, for instance - there's just not a whole lot of incentive for other people to do it.

exactly.

i think this would be a really important move by the community. we should be putting our money where it counts.

besides:

better software = more users = higher value and utility of btc

I think the best way to do this is for someone to plan a specific project for a specific feature or enhancement.  Estimate the amount of money to get a specific developer or two to work on it and be able to complete it.  Then use a dominance assurance contract to try and raise the necessary funding (the project lead would get a portion of the revenue as well and would be incentivized to market the project and raise the funds).  The person leading it could solicit four or five ideas, try and figure out which one is most likely to get funding (polls, talking to devs, etc), and then focus on the top idea.

I actually think the software industry will move to this model of funding as a better, more efficient alternative to copyright and licensing.  If someone made this work for Bitcoin development (building the necessary infrastructure along the way), there's no reason it couldn't be used for building all sorts of things (and I would love to be an investor in such a company).

what is a dominance assurance?

I've said that I think the download-and-install-software-on-your-PC is a mostly-dead way of using software, and that the vast majority of people using Bitcoin in a year or three will be using it via a web application or on their smart phone. That's half of the reason why I don't think improving the UI is a high priority right now (the other half is because I think solving wallet security and backup issues is critical).

RE: 2112 and GAAP:  "patches welcome."  I don't know nuthin about GAAP, so if you're complaining that the reference implementation doesn't adhere to them then I'm not surprised. Feel free to fix that, or write a detailed proposal on what's wrong, why it'll cause problems, and how it ought to be fixed.

RE: funding development: funding open source software projects is tricky; if done poorly you end up with a couple of paid developers and lots of disappointed unpaid former contributors who decide "I'm not gonna work if I'm not gonna get paid."

That said... stay tuned, and I'll say more when I can.

oh my god we just figured out the announcement!

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=dominance+assurance+contract

The reason Bitcoin is the future isn't because of its efficiency. Things like square are mere bandaids for a dying system. The reason Bitcoin will trump everything else is because it is a sound currency, unlike all things fiat.

that has nothing to do with what he's talking about.

The point I clearly didn't make is that it's no surprise that Starbucks accepts things like Square because those are just improved technologies propping up the status quo.

Bitcoin is helping to build an entirely new economic model from the ground up.

Square plans to disrupt the retail payments market.  Merchant acceptance is what will bring users onboard.  There's no expensive infrastructue so merchants can adopt it with little risk.  It's becoming a common strategy.

Bitcoin will only ever be a niche currency until it's user-friendly - no matter how sound it is.  It could be being used as a leap frog technology in developing nations right now if it wasn't so cumbersome.  More user-friendly systems requiring only a smartphone already exist - Bitcoin needs to lift its game if it wants to compete in the payments market and not just be a speculative commodity until something shinier comes along.

Well folks, that is how you spin a quote out of context.

A government is funding bitcoin development!

ITS CANADA!!!!

lol you guessed it...Somalia decided to fund Bitcoin  ;)

Haha who's the big backer? Some crazy old people organization? A politcal party? A rebellious business (virgin or ryanair?)?

The US has a secret government run by the CIA  :D

Plus they have a venture capital firm for it.

people have been saying that for years and years already. i hope it isn't true.

Somalia = Pirate(s). Guess it all makes sense now.

I think Gavin's essentially right about the future of software but has over-estimated the time-frame.  People want the same kind if usability on their smartphones and tablets that they have on their laptops and PCs but they want it now, not in 2 or 3 years.  People don't their computing to be tied down by location any more than they want their telephony to require physical proximity.  There may be congestion issues with mobile computing at the moment, but people are still abandoning fixed internet connections in favour of mobile broadband and phone and tablet computing in droves. All many people need to make the switch total is some killer apps, and that will happen sooner rather than later.

Bitcoin is a labor of love, they do it because they want to take power away from the big banks and big government.

I think the best way to pay the developers is to invest some time and money to make sure that anyone who has contributed will be remembered. The psychological incentive is more meaningful than money.

*

Now that they've acquired a good portion of Bitcoin economy (Pirate was a CIA agent) they can announce support for it => profit! :)

What would be cool is if mining pool's gives the option to miners to donate some funds to a shared developers bitcoin wallet.

Then at the end of each release, the funds inside that address will be automatically divided equally based on criteria possibly such as:

1) the number of commits
2) number of lines written
3) Im not sure if its possible to gauge the severity or importance of a fix.

those qualifiers are not good signs of quality or useful code.

but what about the idea of bounties for features?

actually i'm not a huge fan of that either, at least not by itself. i really think we should let the devs figure out how they want to break up the money. we just need to give it to them.

Where have we heard that before?  :P

Hopefully the devs have a stake in Bitcoin from being early adopters...thus, they work to increase the value of their own coin. Also, it's not just devs that make Bitcoin valuable. Perhaps we should pay magicaltux, Charlie at bitinstant, coinabul, Casascius, Matthew, etc.

My guess would be that the project is going to be picked up by some OSS foundation - Apache maybe?

Bitcoin creditcards? Bitcoin wallets like Bitcoinspinner for Android, super easy to use webwallets like coinbase and mywallet at blockchain.info.
Sending Bitcoins, via twitter, email, facebook...

i don't know. if what we're talking about is download-and-run vs download-and-run-in-browser, apple, google AND microsoft have shifted the game back to the latter, and it's probably going to stay that way for a good while.

(although frankly given the increasing restrictions you can almost count the app stores as 'browsers')

i shouldn't speak for him/her so much, i don't think that is what was meant exactly.

we're just talking about the very first experience here. you download, you run, and what happens? how many people assume that it is broken or not working because of a simple thing like the app not explaining that the blockchain has to download first?

You pay them by using their services or buying their products. For instance, everyone has bought some physical bitcoins from Casascius, yes?

yes i think the distinction needs to be made between already operating-for-profit companies and core bitcoin TEAM or related projects.

If the developers wanted to and were able to get Mt Gox and some of the larger mining pools on board, they could roll back the block chain to zero, claiming that since bitcoin was out of beta, they'd need to restart the whole thing. You should be polite to the devs so they don't do this.

I agree with Steve that the right way to do this is to post assurance contracts (they don't have to be dominant) for concrete, well planned out and achievable goals.

"Assurance contract" is just a fancy term for what Kickstarter does. People make pledges. The money doesn't leave your wallet unless enough money is pledged collectively. With Bitcoin it can be done middleman-free.

The reasons this hasn't happened yet are:

• Most core developers are either already able to devote a lot of time to Bitcoin, or have stable jobs that they want to keep for now.
• The infrastructure for doing Bitcoin assurance contracts doesn't exist.

I suspect in future somebody will set up a company that implements highly desired features using ACs as a funding mechanism.

Who is "we" and what are the requirements to be part of "the community"?

I'm putting a lot of time into cbitcoin at the moment. The motivation is not only to support bitcoin but because it leads onto some business ideas I have. Business sponsorship of bitcoin development would be one way forward.

why do we need business sponsorship of bitcoin when we are literally making money?

another idea: paying translators.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=106233

I'd rather see people on the dev team that do that awesome work because they believe in bitcoin and are crypto-geeks at heart rather than people who code for money.

What do you mean? Who's making money for what?

he means we are mining it

yep

Since when were miners sponsoring bitcoin development?

i'm not saying miners have to support developers, i'm saying we are literally manufacturing money with this platform, so we don't really have a problem figuring out where to get it, and we don't have to go to "businesses".

So you are saying that miners should subsidize the developers?  ::)

no i am saying that we should setup a fund and everyone that can contribute, should.

i don't give a fuck about the difference between miners and regular users.

Currently the dividends go to the faucet , the testing project, bitcoin100 and the bounty for blockchain compression. Theres a lot of worthy bitcoin projects and not enough dividends to go round unfortunately. Im hoping the testing project comes soon to save me having to choose winners and losers in the process.

*pokes Gavin

I feel the same way about the Police. Thats why I want to fire them all and only rely upon super-heros who do it solely for Truth, Justice and the American way. You don't see Superman bitching about paying his rent do you? Nope, he's got a horrible day job where he's treated like crap by his bosses and mocked on a daily basis to make ends meet, but thats the point isn't it? By making it EXTRA difficult and exhausting to be a hero for the community we make sure we don't get stuck with any of those lousy pragmatic types that give in to the realities of putting food on the table. Nope, thats what makes them SUPER HEROS.

That, and the fact they don't exist.

 ;)