Bitcoin Forum

I am seeing a lot of complaints about the current Bitcoin development powers that be.

The question is does the desire for a new development team with an agenda independent of Mr. Andresen's and friends truly exist? Is it big enough?

If so, Bitcoin shareholders should have little issue raising the money for another team.

Gavin is the right guy to lead the team.  "herding cats" is not an easy task.

Developers are free to make their own lightweight or mobile clients, which are also needed in the bitcoin world.

As a significant shareholder, I disagree. If Bitcoin was a company and had a board, I would of asked for Gavin's resignation long ago.

Gavin gives me the impression of a tinkerer, an experimenter, a hobbyist. When it comes to Bitcoin being made as a product for human beings, I find him completely lacking. He's not a business person and he admits that shamelessly. What Bitcoin needs more than ever is the human element.

I am confident people will inevitably agree and act upon this -- far beyond simple clients.

but oh wait...it isnt. and you are not a shareholder. you are just some random noob claiming to be of overaverage importance.


you have to make it work before you make it pretty.


business - human element ... oxymoron anyone?  ;)

The function of a tool and its interface are one. A tool that cannot be successfully and easily used is not a functional tool at all. Is not the purpose of technology to make tasks easier and more efficient? Anyways, as far as I'm concerned, Bitcoin works very well internally.  Bitcoin has proven to be stable software.

True businesses have always excelled at serving humanity. The ones who don't inevitably fail. Corporations and states are another story.

his idea isn't as ridiculous as you make it out to be, you know the saying you get what you pay for, if we all pay 100$ for a new bitcoin client maybe it will be better... but i dont think you could sell the software if open source code was used to make it.

maybe a better solution would be to hire more help for the current team?

but they always said that adding more people to a project make things move slower....

na i take it all back, I've seen Linux grow up, their nothing stronger then free open source software.

Fund it yourself then!  It is a known standard, go at it.

You can sell open source code the problem with doing that for bitcoin is the Berkeley DB it uses would need an upgrade to a commercial license to be able to sell it.

I don't think the dev team gets enough credit. Remember that time the client had a security vulnerability and a bunch of people lost their money? Me neither.

+1

I don't think you know Gavin.  That said, diversity in client implementations is not a bad thing.

You talk about a new development team and then you say that Gavin is not a business person. If Bitcoin was a company then the guy developing the core functionality of the product wouldn't be the one selling it.

We have typical sales people too you know, look here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=61017.0). Or here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52543.0).

Gavin has been doing an excellent work. The priority is security and protocol changes first and thats a very good priority.

A lot of people have compromised PC:s.
Bitcoin would just look bad if the first thing that happened was that most people lost their coins.

When it comes to the UI the useability of the client is not that bad most people should be able to use it without any problem.

Whats really is bad from a user point is the huge block download, people will think it sucks, but my guess is that it will also
be adressed.
But I would rather see that the client got support for easy mining in order to increase the security.

Than you have URI support.

Even if some of the other clients would get much better most  people will not find them at first.
Judging the whole Bitcoin concept only on the standard client.

But it would not hurt to have more people work in parallel at some of the other things and look at the code.

Gavin's good!

Have you ever tried funding primary development team? Just curious

This is pretty much the only thing that is not optimal.

I doubt you have ever taken the time to really understand where Gavin is coming from. He personally funded the faucet, and literally poured at least a couple thousand Bitcoins into that, and he simply did that to generate more interest in Bitcoin. If that were the only thing he had done, I would consider him one of the most invested proponents of Bitcoin based on that alone. If you are THAT invested in Bitcoin, then maybe you should front up some of this funding yourself, and better yet, rather than dividing developer's efforts by stringing them along with $$$ for your personal agenda, why don't you start SUPPORTING the developers that got Bitcoin to where it is now rather than putting them down. Gavin has cemented his reputation as a generous, genial, transparent, and technically adept developer with regards to leading Bitcoin forward. Now YOU come along to destabilize all his effort because he's not a "business person". All I can say is thank this good green earth he ISN'T. If this project had ever been an enterprise it would be dead.

Gavin, if you ever read this, KEEP DOING WHAT YOU'RE DOING!

What he's saying is ridiculous, and you actually explained why. It's essential that "core" Bitcoin development continues in the open source spirit. Their job is the specification and the network, bitcoind's role is merely as a reference implementation. Anyone can fund a Bitcoin development team that considers it from a business perspective and build a better client, but the core development endeavor should never be tainted by such an approach.

On the other hand, there are similar ideas roaming around that are akin to what OP is saying. For instance we can hire security experts to do audits on the system. I think independent reports would increase trust in the underlying system. Bounties per exploit are probably a bad idea though, since they could create a conflict of interest.

Atlas, is that you? ;D

as a complete outsider (almost) I have a few BTC, I like it just the way it is!. As a non technical person Its a little cumbersome to use and I appreciate the need to upgrade the security issues so Gavin +1. Anything at all that sounds like the system we are currently in after thousands of years of human development for humans is a no-no for me, ie: "a fund" , "operate like a business", "significant investor", central control, or any association with the current systems malfunctioning terminology or methodology is not helpful .  reg.

Exactly. It is open source and anyone can contribute improvements. So if you can make improvements and/or want to fund people (I'll also do bitcoin client work for BTC) to make improvements, please do so.

We do not need ideas, we need *implemented* ideas.

I also find the standard client (for windows) lacks a lot of important features.
Some of them can be set in a config for bitcoind, can I also do that with the windows gui one ?

Just to list a few that I miss

• Disable IRC connection
• Static list of nodes to connect to
• View balance by addresses
• Select sender addresses
• Import private keys
• Register for bitcoin://
• Delete incoming addresses (with warning if it contains funds, etc)

However that being said, the program is stable and works well.

please, feel free try and promote alternative clients, and to donate to their developers.
I suggest you have a look at:
*Electrum, a lightweight client: http://ecdsa.org/electrum
*libbitcoin: An alternative bitcoin library (for servers): http://libbitcoin.org

I was about to say that! xD

I am just an interested party. This thread is relevant to my original intentions.

Our firm has decided to hold back from revealing ourselves and even accepting clientele for Bitcoins. With the recent addition of talent, we will now be working on Bitcoin software.

I have not lied. Again, I am just an interested and curious party.

Didn't ther used to be a noob filter for this forum?

I don't think there's any problem with having alternative Bitcoin development teams.  If you believe the client can be better, then create a better client.  We already have several teams of people developing alternative clients.  Armory is quite impressive so far, for one.

I don't think there's any reason to call for the resignation of existing teams though.  If you don't like Gavin's client, then use a client you do like.

If you don't like ANY of the existing clients, then sure, start up a fund for an alternative development team.  Maybe you can find the right members for a different team that will develop a client to your specifications.  But there's no reason to oust Gavin and his team in the process.  They can develop their client, and you can develop yours.

I will be justifying my criticism very shortly.

I hold my breath  ;D


+1
I believe Gavin's got his priorities right..
He is definitely not a business person: he s built a 50 million dollar business for the community in less than 3 years ;)

If you've got a great business model and funding for a much better bitcoin client, more power to you!

If you're planning on defacing one of the web servers that I haven't been keeping up-to-date (because I'm busy doing Bitcoin-related things) or hacking my gmail account to prove that I'm not The World's Best Security Expert... then I'll save you the trouble:

I am not the World's Best Security Expert.
I am not the World's Best Programmer.
I am not a cryptographer.
I am not an expert on finance or banking or monetary systems.
I am not an expert on leading open source projects.

And I hope someday I get replaced as the technical lead for this project. I'm sure there are lots of people better qualified than me, I'm just doing the best I can to try to help make Bitcoin a success.

I don't like to see you humble yourself. That's not what I want. I just want to see Bitcoin built to a more human-based direction; especially by perspectives other than my own.

What I am going to do tonight is offer a constructive critique of Bitcoin in its current form. It seems that is what this discussion is lacking.

Rock on Gavin. You're doing a great job. In the beginning I was also a bit critical of bitcoin development, but it all ended up fine, and you've earned a lot of people's trust.

The best way of getting rid of people like Boss, is to ask him what has he done for bitcoin?

Build a client, improve a client, extend the bitcoin ecosystem, teach people how to use bitcoin.. have something to show except for empty talk and a forum pseudonym.

And doing "more human" stuff is *not* the responsibility of the developers of the satoshi client (or the "lead") in the first place.  We make the client. It is up to you, the community, to do something with it. And the bitcoin community has spread way beyond this forum.

There is plenty of opportunity for alternative clients.
Check out Armory:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=56424.0

If any of them one day proves to be better, people will switch.

IMO Armory looks very promising, but at this point is still lightyears away from being a proven stable client like what Gavin made. Still, feel free to donate to the developer

considering the fact that it took etotheipi just seven months to get armory to where its now, i think lightyears are not what they used to be. that guy is definitely traveling at warp speed. i think its realistic to hope that armory becomes usable within the next few months. of course, being "proven" is nothing you can rush. but i hope it becomes an alternative full client, because it really has great potential.

still, gavin i think gavin is doing a good job and his conservative approach with security as the main priority is the best choice as long as the original client is without a real alternative.

I dont see the issue here. Gavin is very open and careful about implementation of new features to the bitcoin protocal. This is what *everyone* should hope for. Tinkering on the testnet is what its for.

If its the main software your unhappy about go ahead and build another.

I strugle to see an issue with this. Gavin is exactly what we hope for in this software at this time.

Armory is a thin client currently. It uses the Satoshi client as its backend. I think it looks very promising as well, and I'm planning to use it to create a safe offline wallet (because it supports offline transactions natively). But currently it does not implement the Bitcoin protocol, and so the development time put into it cannot be compared to that of bitcoin-qt. It will indeed be interesting too see how long it takes take to implement the core protocol.

Instead of telling us you are going to do something, just do it. BTW, anything you come up with has probably already been re-hashed ad nauseum anyway.

Why do you think he calls himself the Boss?

I'll do just that.

March 11, 2012.

Expect big things. You heard it here first.

Will it be an announcement that it's closed due to a lack of interest?

Is there an inside joke I am missing here?

^ No it's just skepticism. Now please surprise us! I firmly believe that competition can only be good for Bitcoin.

Hey, its past March 11, 2012 now.

I canceled all my appointments and sent my men home with paid to set and wait for this today. Please don't disappoint me.

http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/217747_178075872242122_129492317100478_392436_5044681_n.jpg

+1

A little patience guys, the Boss is on his way back from Andromeda, traffic jam ;)

Don't know what to make of it, but Atlas's home page sure is cool as fuck.

http://www.talkandroid.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/galaxy-nexus-something-big.jpg?3995d3

People have no problem waiting two hours to download a movie.

Bitcoin-qt was fine when John Smith wrote it, having it absorbed into the main bitcoin bundle just serves as a potential distraction from the important part, which is bitcoind.

I can understand that it was probably easier to pull it into bitcoin because it was so inextricably entwined into the internals that probably ought to be bitcoind's business only and not concern clients whatsoever, but still, bitcoind - the actual core protocol code - is what the core team should be working on and allowing the GUI GU GUI oh shiny wah wah where's my GUI I can't read nor write I gotta click click click crowd divert attention from the core stuff happens too darn often in too many things.

Maybe when Armory takes off qt can be deprecated until someone unravels it from bitcoind so it can run separately as a front end using an API to interface with the actual protocol.

-MarkM-

P.S: When I run stuff as another username in text mode, it cannot read my keyboard, scrape my screen, track my mouse movements and so on, as far as I am aware. Whereas if I let it have access to Xwindows (my GUI), it can do all those things, last I heard... Thus encouraging people to use a GUI for mission-critical financial applications seems a bad idea. (No wonder they get their wallets stolen? Their passwords are visible to any trojan they allow to access their GUI system? Does that apply to Windows GUI also?)

For the most part, wumpus still maintains QT, and the rest of the devs focus on bitcoind, although there is necessarily more overlap than there was initially.

So, what about these things, Atlas?

http://bitkoin.su

hmm...how typical is this?

If you have the money, just start it. if you just ask for free opinion, it's no and this not a good idea.

It must be a host-related issue (nearlyfreespeech.net). That's all I can say about that.

Gavin- you are doing just fine for me:

I am not the World's Best Security Expert.
I am not the World's Best Programmer.
I am not a cryptographer.
I am not an expert on finance or banking or monetary systems.
I am not an expert on leading open source projects.

If you want the best security DO NOT ask a cop
If you want the best program DO NOT rely on the best programmer
Hardly anyone is a cryptographer
If you want to replace the current defunct finance and baking system DO NOT ask an expert (where x is an unknown and a spurt is a drip under pressure)
If you want a leader DO NOT ask for volunteers or vote on it co-opt the most able all round guy and support him 100%

Gavin you got the job!   reg.

You are completely out of place, mumbling like a small child which got lost and doesn't know where it is.

Let me clearify some simple rules for you:

- Open Source projects are **NOT** companies, neither they behave as one
- Open Source projects are **NOT** ruled by shareholders.
- Open Source projects are **NOT** ruled by money.
- If you want something done well in Open Source world, do it yourself
    - If you can't do it yourself, find somebody who can and pay him
- If you don't like a project, just fork it or write it from the scratch (but you still have to convince people to use your version which will not be easy)

Gavin, i previously had my share of doubts whether are you are right man on the right place, but now i think you fit the position very well.

Linus torvalds also wasn't a world-class genius when he started Linux kernel project. You surely have potential to become Linus of the Bitcoin world.

solution:
git clone https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.git

FORK THE CLIENT!

I'm very close to putting this guy on ignore.  ::)

the other thing that Gavin has demonstrated is consistency and stability.  i can only imagine the large number of ppl who have tried to coerce or manipulate Gavin in who knows how many different ways that could've greatly changed or destroyed the protocol as we've come to know it. 

the guy above says that Gavin should have a more "human" element.  i think he's already demonstrated himself to be very approachable and friendly and is available to explain and defend the approach he's taken with Bitcoin.  he turns out to be a great ambassador.

Satoshi chose him for a reason and it was to maintain the principles and tenets of what he created.  this is the contract that most of us have signed up for.

The loyalty in this thread concerns me.

In essence, I'm scared of one person having influence over Bitcoin's protocol. I trust nobody and neither should you. Bitcoin is a powerful technology and if anything will kill it, corruption will.

Good luck with that, I want to see your version of the client, security holes and all. Can't improve it yourself? Then stfu.

I think that the main problem is that any dark force cannot threaten satoshi
but they can do that with development team   

Why would anyone improve something if they don't know what to improve? I will continue to speak. All voices need to be heard regardless of skill.

or logic.

The issue you are talking about is a non-issue in the Open Source world.
In free software world, if you don't like something, and you have valid logical arguments that something is wrong, then you make a fork, convince people and they will follow you (if you are "worthy" of course).

The old times are gone. One can be truly free to choose between different software/digital currency systems, if only he desires it.

If the things Gavin is doing were really bad, somebody would notice (sooner or later) - the openess of the source guarantees that. And scandal like that would surely fork the project. People would move to the new, better project. Justice is served.

----
So please, really - stop talking jibberish and give me arguments.
Show what is so wrong in the code, that Gavin needs to be fired. Do a code review. Hire a programmer/software analyst/ to inspect Bitcoin's source.

But if you have no such arguments, you can also shut up.

:+1 !!!!!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/24/linux_kernel_randd_estimate_u_of_oviendo/

It would cost approx. 1 bln of euros (old 2010 data, currently probably 50% more) for EU to make Linux.
**And they still would not make it right**.

I wonder how much would Bitcoin cost right now ? Hundereds thousands ?
Programmers that can code Bitcoin aren't cheap - that i can tell.

If I was part of an alternative development team,I can contribute design ideas and help with the layout and user interface plus make it more user friendly as well assuming I can get the job. Do development teams focus on desgn more or is it coding,or both?

Why not offer your services to the existing development team? I am sure they could use people to do all kind of things.

What the hell is this?  You think this is going to make an impact?  LOL, lame.

Either add something of value to the community or shut up.  Flinging your FUD on productive contributors just makes you look foolish.

Server not found  8)

LOL I forgot about that one. I wondered how long it was going to be before he lost interest and abandoned it, or got it shut down or whatever happened to it.

How would a new development team solve the problem of having significant power in the hands of the few?

"Loyalty" is a misnomer. Mostly anti-trolling and anti-flaming sentiment. I'm not suggesting that you intend to do either, but you come across that way.

My gut feeling is that most of the dev team, and Gavin in particular, are way on the plus side in the Bitcoin community.  If someone choose to characterize the community and project as a cesspool I would have to stretch to come to it's defense to be honest.  But I probably would in many environments...just not on bitcointalk.org.

My gut sense is that due to the current dev team, Bitcoin will fail as a result of it's success rather than for less pleasant reasons.  That has a lot to do with why I keep a pretty significant bet on it.  The other reason is that I expect that having a foot in the Bitcoin door is the most likely way to move into whatever comes after be that an evolution of Bitcoin or a replacement which builds on some of the trails that Bitcoin has blazed.

Maybe the mods should lock all Atlas threads every time he gets banned.  He's on a posting frenzy over at reddit if you want to catch up with his latest ideas/philosophy/bullshit dribbling.