You are saying that as if that would be a bad thing. Speculation is bad use of bitcoin (or any other currency), screw all the speculators! Make real services instead!

I'm glad that I'm not the only one worried about this. Reading the forums, there are all kinds of speculative uses, gambling, admitted ponzi schemes and similar crap ... but well, that's ok, nobody wants to forbid it, anyone can make crap if they want to ... what worries me is that it is generally accepted by bitcoin community as legitimate use - that is very dangerous thing, I thought people here would be more informed than that. This is the exact same mindset that brought about the economy crisis. The purpose of money is not to make more money! It is supposed to be a medium of exchange for real goods and services ... I'm watching with horror when there is a casino game posted and nobody speaks a word that that kind of use is extremely bad for bitcoin let alone it being immoral ... you make money on others desire to make money! Essentially taking advantage of their greed, it does not produce anything useful except nurturing bad aspects of human nature.

As far as speculation is concerned, that is simply a theft. Again, it does not produce anything ... it just siphons money away from real economy. Buying bitcoins for the hope you get more back than you put in later on is not investment, it's robbing people who make real contribution of their work. Investment would be giving someone bitcoins to make a new useful service which is going to rise the demand for bitcoin therefore up its value - that is real investment and the person investing in it deserves to make profit. Speculators are just thieves, shame on them!

Why nobody else says this? Maybe because our real world economy was turned to crap and people see that crap everywhere so they consider it "normal" ... it is not! Wall Street is a parasite destroying everything it touches, please do not allow the same thing happen to bitcoin. If there are no real goods and services flowing between people who intend to actually use them (not speculate with them), it's a bubble economy and it is going to crash and burn sooner or later.

I'm not going into bitcoin right now exactly for this reason, there are no real things I would actually desire to buy for it so far so it is clear that the current value of bitcoin is a bubble for sure. If there are not real things available for bitcoin soon it is going to collapse just like our real world economy. And these "investors" are going to cry how it could happened, fools.

This is another example of a knee-jerk reaction you see. And exactly what I was talking about in my previous post. You do not really disagree with any of the arguments, you just want to have a stab at me because you feel like you're being told what to do or think. That doesn't mean that what I'm saying isn't the right course of action or that you would disagree that it is, it's just your ego provoking an irrational response without any real basis. Let me give an another example demonstrating what's happening here:

A guy stands in front of a window preparing to jump, someone comes along and tries to persuade him not to because he is going to hurt himself. Some other guy notices this and interprets it as someone telling others what to do and rushes to the window guy 'defense', attacking the one who is trying to persuade him not to jump: "Why are you telling others what to do?", maybe starts mocking him: "Do you believe there are any matters that should be left to people's own discretion, without deferring to your wisdom?". You see, his only focus is the fact that someone is giving arguments to another in order to persuade him that his course of action is unwise (which he interprets as 'telling others what to do') and does not pay attention to whether said arguments are in fact valid or not and the guy preparing to jump could really hurt himself - he doesn't care about that. Others may join in and attack the guy further: "You do not know how deep it is under the window, maybe he won't hurt himself" (aka "You can not be sure we can not trust closed-source, maybe they won't rip us off"), "There is no reason to discourage him from jumping, he can just jump tomorrow anyway", "We shouldn't put banister on balcony, people can jump anyway"  (aka "People can just make the software from scratch anyway").

All these arguments are so transparently irrational to me that I can not imagine anyone not seeing that. The above situation is what I see when I read the thread. I'm saying that bitcoin is going to 'jump out of the window' and hurt itself if we encourage closed-source implementations and people are attacking me for 'telling them what to do' instead of looking at whether the arguments I present are actually valid. They do not disagree that bitcoin can be hurt by closed-source, they just do not like being told so by me or something. It's really incomprehensible to me why people react like this, it's probably our twisted culture. If we wouldn't be so reactionary, we wouldn't be so easily controlled and manipulated. You can almost literally cause people to jump from the window by telling them that the person telling them not to is 'telling them what to do' and therefore they should do exact opposite ... and people apparently consider that a valid reason, it's upside down.

But I'm sure folks are going to jump all over me again for 'telling them what to do', 'talking down to them', 'being condescending' or whatever emotional ego reaction they're going to have rather than consider whether what I'm saying is true or not. They're going to 'defend' the right of the guy to jump from the window rather than joining me in persuading him not to because it's foolish. Yeah well, if there is not some personal growth encouraged in the bitcoin community, it is going to be subverted, hijacked and neutralized extremely easily ... closed-source software is one of the options to do exactly that and you're even inviting people to do it instead guarding against it, incredible!

Now, this may be a little extreme example, but it demonstrates the issue quite well I think:

It "restricts the freedom" of the developers in similar way that laws against rape "restrict the freedom" of rapists to rape. It makes no sense to use or encourage closed-source client any more than asking for rape. Using closed-source client is like walking trough dark isolated street alone in the middle of the night ... you are asking for it. And you are going to get it sooner or later.

Now those screaming "I can trust whoever I want, that's none of your business", sure ... that's like I would tell somebody not to go that dark street because it is known for its crime and these people would start screaming that I'm not going to tell them what to do and they're going to go trough that street anyway. It's childish knee-jerk reaction, they do not really disagree that it is dangerous, they do not disagree that they're going to get raped ... they just want to go there because somebody suggested they shouldn't. It's like when you want a kid to open a box, simply tell them not to, they're guaranteed to open it. Reverse psychology. Really incredible that adults are so susceptible to that, or maybe I'm talking to teenagers?


I've already responded to that, does that mean we should make it easy for them? We are going in circles ... that's not an argument for using MIT, that's just an excuse for one of its pitfalls (which GPL doesn't have).


That is a disadvantage, not advantage. We DO NOT want anybody to combine it with any kind of any different license, that would compromise its freedom and therefore security, put many people at risk and endanger the whole bitcoin project. Now, I wouldn't call that a good thing, would you?

What gets me so frustrated here is that people really do not think things through, they just react with a knee-jerk reactions most of the time. I'm not mad at you who write those responses really, I'm mad at those stupid posts So I apologize if I've came off too harsh. Then people just feel like opposing me because I'm "rude" and do not rationally think about the issues, they change into reactionary creatures fighting for their tribe ... it's unfortunate people react like that. There has been not one rational reason for using MIT license over GPL and people still feel like arguing for MIT and I'm unable to understand why except for some psychological issues causing this. Satochi did not answer the questions too, maybe he realized that MIT license makes no sense but instead of admitting that and simply changing it he is ignoring this thread and acting like it wouldn't exist. Sad that people are prone to decide on what they'd like to be true instead of what is actually true ...

You mean like whether you can *trust* it? THAT'S MY FREAKING POINT and it's spelled out in my previous post! Based on what are you going to trust the source? Whether it is large enough? Microsoft sure can be trusted ... or how nice of a logo they have? Maybe your friend is CEO? Is he expected to be personal friend with everyone who uses the software? How does it depend on the source? Please... share this ultimate wisdom with me.


No, anyone who posts several messages without giving ANY reason why MIT would be preferred to GPL is an irrational person. You can not give a reason because there is no reason. The only thing left except admitting that, is calling people names, there is no rational reason against using GPL ... if there was, you would stated it already. But you must be an Internet hero and argue your case to the death no matter how wrong you are. That kind of mentality just makes me mad, as you may have noticed and you call me a zealot, lol

I can't believe this, what are you arguing here? The same question, is this something about "winning an argument"? NONE of what have you written is ANY reason WHATSOEVER to use MIT over GPL. Why are you making up excuses (ridiculous at that) for the pitfalls of MIT rather than stating why would MIT be more advantageous to GPL? There is an easy answer for that, because there isn't any rational advantage to it! Is it surprising that I'm going mad here over that kind of silly things you say?

There is really simple thought process behind this to decide this question, please answer these one by one:

1) Would you personally accept closed source software dealing with your bitcoin transactions running on your station? (in that case I'm going to send you that credit card utility I told you about)
2) Would you recommend to anybody else to use closed source implementation of the bitcoin protocol? (not yours with your backdoor to make a buck I mean third-party software)
3) If you would not use closed source yourself and did not recommend to others to use such a software, what good is an option to fork existing implementation and make one?

See? Real easy .. I do not see any reason why would you want to fight a battle against GPL, why would you be against GPL? It makes no sense.

The only other option would be to *trust* the publisher of the software, in that case I would ask why use bitcoin at all? Its very design is centered about the idea of eliminating central authority that has to be trusted. You can just as well use regular dollars and *trust* the federal reserve and the US government to take care of your currency ... that turned out well, right? Do you want the same thing to happen to bitcoin?

Oh gosh, I have to calm down ... it really is hard for some people to grasp this. Please listen to yourself, you're saying that using closed source client is a bad idea, do I understand that right? And you are encouraging people to use the open-source MIT one over the closed source one, right? That means people should really use only the open-source version to not get screwed ... what. is. the. point. of. the. MIT. license. then!? The MIT license is specifically designed to allow for closed source derivatives! If you're saying that people should only use open-source one without the risk of getting "what they deserve" if they don't ... you are in total agreement with me and you are making the exact same argument for using GPL as I am. Why do you feel the need to make excuses for MIT license then? Do you not like me personally that you just have to disagree with me for some reason? Or is this some ego thing about "winning an argument" or something? I honestly do not understand why people do this, it's frustrating. You may not like me, you may not like my style, you may enjoy arguing or whatever but I beg you to leave that behind and look at the facts and logic instead, please!


Ok, one by one:

1) Proprietary version doesn't mean that it will be doing only things that you'll easily notice, it can have backdoors, it can be dormant for several years and then rob a half the community at some point effectively destroying bitcoin (but still making a huge profit for whoever has done this)

2) Yes, there is a possibility that someone will develop a client from scratch, is there any reason you can think of that we should make that possibility much higher by making it easy to do? I love this logic, let's all put wallets on our front porch ... they could just taken them by stealing them in a crowded bus anyway, so what's the harm.

All you've written are excuses to do nothing ... not reasons to have MIT license, you did not say why MIT would be preferable to GPL, you just made excuses for the additional and unnecessary pitfalls of MIT. There is no reason to keep these pitfalls if there are no benefits that outweigh them. I see no benefits to MIT, only unnecessary dangers. The only supposed "benefit" is the possibility of closed sourced forks which you yourself said are dangerous and discouraged. So I really do not see why would you have any rational reason to disagree with me.

yeah, it's not surprising at all ... that's why MIT should not be considered in a first place, exactly because it allows this kind of abuse. The question is not whether it is surprising but whether it is desirable, wouldn't you say? If any kind of proprietary software stemming from this would get popular, it's not going to be surprising at all when a hell of a lot of people will get robbed of all their bitcoins ... that doesn't mean we should allow it, does it? I said people are just confused ... talking about whether it is "surprising" the the license allows for obvious abuse rather than talking about eliminating that abuse. Do you support that kind of "obvious consequence" then? It seem to me that you're arguing in its favor.


X11 or BSD are not small client programs that handle your freaking financial transactions, I bet you would be all happy to accept this program I made, it makes credit card transactions a lot easier, you just type in your credit card information into it ... it's real convenient, shall I send it to you? I'm sure you wouldn't have any problem with that, would ya?


It's hard to believe that such an intelligent person would make such comments you just did then ... I'm startled.

That's exactly the point! I get the impression that many people commenting do not understand the issues involved quiet well enough and get confused a little ... no offense

So I would like to hear a response to that question too ... are you going to support and condone someone taking the code, adding a little eye-candy and little nice features perhaps and distributing this proprietary closed-sourced client to the bitcoin community? As you seem to be actually encouraging that by releasing the code under MIT license.

How are you going to check if there isn't any "bonus" to that eye-candy in the form of a backdoor, if it does follow the protocol correctly, if it doesn't at some point in time just transfer all the bitcoins from everyone to some hardcoded address? Is there any reliable way or are we just supposed to *trust* the publisher?

Why all the trouble to develop a decentralized system with specific goal of eliminating the need for central authority to trust when you then allow this exact thing to be reintroduced in the form of trusting the publisher of your software?

For those who would trade their principles for wider adoption ... I would rather want smaller community of a system I can rely on than a big one that is compromised. As far as I'm concerned, the corporations and "businesses" that won't respect the principles of transparency and openness can stick it! They're going to corrupt it and destroy anyway if they are allowed any larger influence. Did it not occur to you that there is a reason some corporations won't touch GPL? They can not cheat and rip people off with that kind of software ... that translates into lower profits. I don't know about you but I certainly wouldn't miss that kind of "company" ... That's like asking Microsoft to help popularize your OS - they are going to screw you over the first chance they get, it's going to get popular allright but it's going to be no longer the OS you had in mind at first.

Your argument Satochi that it creates duplication of work is a valid one ... it makes cheating and compromising the bitcoin community a hell of a lot easier for anyone who wishes to do so. But I did not realize that was the kind of duplicity we were worried about.

I would like to hear any reasonable scenario where distribution of a proprietary bitcoin software would be acceptable, would *you* accept a proprietary implementation to run on your system? Would you recommend to anybody to use such an implementation? I'm really curious about this ... thank you.

(and sorry, I'm kind of perturbed by the responses ... if you sense any tension from my post it's from frustration that people would even consider running a black box software dealing with bitcoins, incredible!)

For a software like this, *only* GPL license makes any sense. It's not about an ideology but rather anyone who would trust proprietary software for their financial transactions and a system like bitcoin is a fool and deserves what's coming for them (which is a lot of stolen "cash"). Using proprietary software may even result in hijacking of the whole bitcoin network if significant portion of people would use such a client. There is no way to reliably test for backdoors or other nasty stuff, any closed-source software should be essentially banished by the bitcoin community. GPL allows you to make private in-house modification as much as you like so that's not an issue at all. The only situation that causes GPL to trigger is when you *distribute* the software to other people, in which case you have to provide sources along with it which is the only way anyone should accept any software dealing with bitcoin anyway.

You have to also realize that there are no legal consequences to any "theft" as using bitcoin from neutral point of view is essentially just moving some arbitrary bits around. So the bitcoin community is expected to self-regulate, which should come in a form of an enforced transparency (by all the users rejecting anything else). Considering any other license than GPL-like is playing with fire and is not going to end well.

I did not realize current bitcoin client was released under MIT license,

This should be changed to GPL IMMEDIATELY!

GPLv3 even protects you from said software to be locked up by DRM so even when it's open-source you would not have access to it. There is no disadvantage to using GPL license really. Anyone spreading FUD about GPL is either not appropriately informed/did not consider all the issues or has an ulterior motive as far as I'm concerned. I'm not going to trust any closed-source, that's for sure ... and if significant portion of the bitcoin community is, then I'm going to sell off all my bitcoins and get out as that's a prescription for disaster, sooner or later.

As much as adoption is concerned, I'm not interested in people who feel the need to keep the source closed and hidden from its users to "adopt" anything as I would hope anyone concerned about the success and reliability of the bitcoin network wouldn't either. To complain about weak adoption in that sphere is like complaining about weak adoption by criminals to me. If someone is honest, they should feel no interest in keeping the source closed ... and every sane person would accept ONLY open-sourced software anyway. It's a win-win situation

Ehm, I believe it is a concept which is going to be filled with real data once it becomes operational

haha, you've got it, here: 1QCNUyy3ViFnMEVTiuMvWgdnJnfYepMibg

That's not the point, if I'm diligent enough to change a source code I'm also diligent enough to apply a -disablesafety switch which is much easier, the issue here is default behavior of the official client. Many people are going to just notice there is a new version, download and install it never realizing this new remote control was inserted there.

Saying that they can examine the source code or that it was openly discussed on the forum is like Facebook saying "but we have an option to delete your account, it's in terms of service, section 76, line 346, under link named so-appalling-that-nobody-would-ever-click-it, then on page 2, just solve the capcha, confirm the dialog, that will disable your account and if you do not log in in a week it will be deleted". In short ... nobody actually does it ... that's how badware behaves and I do not want for Bitcoin to be badware.

If there is a remote safety disable function every user who has it enabled should consciously enable it knowing what it does. This can be easily accomplished by presenting a dialog urging user to enable it while explaining what it does in a GUI client and presenting a warning accomplishing the same task when daemon is run. Simple, efficient and everybody is happy. That's how software that respects its users and is working for them should behave. I'm sure most people would enable it when understanding what it does ... but sneaking this feature in without making sure the user specifically wants it there is making decisions for the user, I do not like decisions being made for me

I'm aware of this because I read the forums but what in the future? (And what about people who do not read forums) Will there be another "feature" inserted and I'm not going to be even notified, explained what it does and asked if I want it enabled? I do not like that if you ask me ... I want to know what software on my CPU does, if it doesn't make reasonable effort to inform me of that and assure that I'm aware of it's behavior I would consider it badware.

That's at least my perspective ... and the fix is extremely easy

Satochi the creator of the decentralized pseudo-anonymous trading system not reliant on trust and using strong cryptography is calling us paranoid LOL

Not wanting any remote tampering of the software running on my PC is not paranoid but a matter of common sense I believe. Of course it is a good idea but it should be enabled ONLY when specifically requested by the user. It should be opt-in as opposed to opt-out. There is a huge difference between the two (ask Facebook). If it's going to be enabled by default it is going to be perceived by many as an exploitable/malicious feature counting on the fact that most people will not realize/notice it is even there. And I wouldn't say these concerns wouldn't be justified ... It doesn't matter that you have best interest of the community at your heart which I'm sure you have, the system was designed not to rely on any kind of central trust and that principle should not be broken.


Why not use -enablesafety to enable this feature instead of expecting the user to disable it? If I want my software to respond to remote alerts I should specifically enable it, that way it is ensured that I'm aware of what I'm doing and I'm doing it of my own will. When it is enabled by default a lot of people may not even realize this "feature" is enabled and perceive remote disabling as a breach of trust ... I know I would if I wasn't aware of that possibility and the software would suddenly stopped working and I would discover it was disabled by remote by someone I gave no conscious permission to do so.

I hope you'll consider this suggestion ... thanks

Oh, so that language was referring to hotlinking? Why not say that directly? That language was very confusing and the replacement isn't much better. Either way, do you actually believe to prevent hotlinking by forbidding it in the TOS?

I do not think that is a realistic expectation. If somebody wants to hotlink they'll do that and wouldn't give a damn about your TOS. And people supporting the site are not going to do that out of respect. So there is no reason to include that line in the TOS other than cosmetic and stirring up controversy. It really makes no sense. It's better to restrict it with some technological means, which is possible if it would become a problem.

So my advice would be to get rid of that particular point. It serves no real practical purpose.

That is too centralized/censorable/hackable, the idea with a message signed with specific private key only satochi has is ideal as it can be introduced at any node and spread trough decentralized means.

I was going to suggest the exact same thing... you beat me to it

However it has to be done carefully, people do not like any unsanctioned changes to happen without their knowledge or any kind of remote control. If this would be implemented I would say that it should not execute any action unless specifically requested/confirmed by the user.

On a GUI client this would be accomplished by presenting a dialog window describing the requested actions and waiting for the user to confirm them (or check an "automatically apply changes suggested in alerts" checkbox, which would be unchecked by default).

Also a deamon should not do anything unless a specific switch for that purpose is applied like --enable-alerts. It can show a warning if this switch is not applied and suggest to enable it to the user but it shouldn't apply it by default automatically.

In short, any changes except simple alerts should be disabled by default.

What? Sounds like the BiddingPond is more like a Pond of Evil

I'm not sure they can even do that legally, first amendment and all but legal or not it goes directly against my personal principles so I'll not spend a Bitcoin there and tell everyone I can to do the same. Vote with your Bitcoins

That's a good idea. Of course we know that we can not blame Bitcoin itself for what some people might do with it but that doesn't stop powerful interests to do so. Take file-sharing and services like the pirate bay as an example, they just provide a search engine for what people themselves share while not providing any copyrighted data of their own. This obviously didn't stop authorities from raiding their servers, prosecuting them and "convicting" them.

So while common sense and reason might be clear on some issues, that doesn't stop those who want to destroy particular system from twisting and inventing "threats" to society of their own making. The unfortunate reality is that most or at least many people are going to accept those claims without any attempt to inform themselves. That's the sad reality of our times and that's why it is in order to minimize the risk of that happening. They might invent something anyway but why make it easy for them?

So that's why I think that this is a good idea and would help Bitcoin to succeed by separating the system itself from how people decide to use it.

Participating in bitcoin IS valuable. Unfair monetary practices and manipulation has caused a lot of injustice and even deaths just like cancer, the wars the US is waging right now would be impossible to sustain with an honest money system. So yeah I believe supporting bitcoin is very valuable use of the CPU time at my disposal.