So Joe cured cancer and eradicated a country full of thieves.
Sounds like a hero to me. 

If Coinhunter hadn't attempted to restrict others from Solidcoin using Copyright law, I wouldn't have cared.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.

We talking about Omar Little? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Little

One real use of BTC is in forex arbitrage, not BTC speculation. BTC exist everywhere simultaneously. So if I buy BTC with USD and then sell BTC for British Pounds. I have sold USD and bought GBP. When I am tired of owning GBP, I can trade them for BTC and then buy any currency I like without having to move my money from one bank to another, or from one country to another.

When BTC is used as a pass-through mechanism like this, the price of BTC becomes irrelevant to the trade. I need X amount to move a particular volume of another currency through BTC.

Sorry for being vague, but it is really hard to give definitive answers in this realm. Even lawyers can only give advice, they cannot absolve you of an licensing difficulties. Ultimately, the only opinion that matters is that of the last judge who rules on the lawsuit. The strange and bizarre can enter into such a case, such as: if you even read the solidcoin code, etc.

It is a bit like quicksand.

I gave my advice earlier in the thread. But to save you a scroll...

Don't mingle anything from Realsolid with anything else. Mixing licenses in this case would be bad as the terms are incompatible.
Make sure any code from SC is in a separate binary. Don't static link it in.

I would not trust advice from viperjm regarding software development. He hasn't done any, nor has he demonstrated on these boards any understanding of it.

The statement you made is false. You don't understand mining. You do not provide your computer as a platform that others can run their code on.

Facts. They are not needed in this thread.

The best & easiest solution:
You can't GPL Solidcoin code (the GPL won't stick in court). Realsolid's license.txt claims the rights to it. So you shouldn't put any of his code in a file with your code.
Put the Solidcoin code in it's own library with it's own license file. Do not static link it into your binary.

I think it is less about credit, and more about control. With full copyright control and via the Solidcoin license.txt, Coinhunter can revoke the right for anyone to use Solidcoin if he feels they are negatively impacting Solidcoin. If most of the source files had the MIT license as required, he would only control a small amount of code comprising the Solidcoin client. An enterprising fellow could re-implement the bits of code that turn Bitcoin into Solidcoin, and then there would be a Solidcoin client which Coinhunter did not control via license.

Fair enough. I accept your clarification on pools and their operators. Where you and I differ is whether Luke harmed his users. I believe he did not. I think Luke is only guilty of being a prick to the creator of CLC. Luke could have handled this situation in a much more mature fashion. Instead, he humiliated the CLC creator when he could have merely demonstrated the weakness in the altcoin and then backed off. If at that point, the creator of CLC still refuses to acknowledge the flaw, then take the gloves off and bodyslam the blockchain.

CLC did serve a valuable purpose. It demonstrated that there is a serious chicken & egg problem with launching altcoins.

The psychological and emotional harm that occurred was the following:
The creater of an altcoin is sad that his altcoin as initially defined was not viable.
Some people who misunderstand what took place and/or are not in possession of the facts are angry.

The first is a fact of life for the altcoin community, I expect it will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.
The second is unavoidable on the internet.

Either add to the list of emotional/psychological harm, or explain why I should be upset by either of it's current entries.

Your position is now much clearer. You hate all pool operators as you consider them to be evil and you view mining software as an infection. There is, in fact, no way for you to avoid hating Luke because he is a pool operator. I see now why you want to discourage all Eligius users from using that pool and to cast off the infected software that they have on their computers.

I do not share your views.

It will. The same way that the car dealership will not end up in court for selling the pedobear his windowless white van. The same way Bushnell will not get in trouble for making and selling the binoculars the pedobear used to stalk his victims. The same way the construction company who built pedobears basement where he keeps the kids will not get in trouble.

You sold the results of a math equation that has plenty of legitimate uses. You had absolutely no say over what the results of that math equation are used for. You are mischaracterizing Lukes relationship with his users. The system would never work if Luke had *any* control over his users resources. Nobody should trust some random pool operator to run any code they like on their computer. That is why the parameters for the work are fixed beforehand, and why all the execution is done at the users behest, not the pool operator.


I apologize for my posts that were well thought out and disagreed with your preconceived notions. I guess people who disagree with you in such a way that you cannot logically disprove their assertions are your definition of evil. I am glad that I do not share your "personal notion of actual right and wrong". If people used logic instead of visceral instincts, they wouldn't need a "moral compass" prepackaged in the form of religion.

I explained in https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=57288.40 how your assumptions about how pools interact with their users are unwarranted and thus your entire cause for complaint moot.

You ought to have something to complain about before posting things for other people to read.

It has become clear that you and others in these threads have a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between a pool operator and pool users.

As I understand it:
A pool user asks the pool for work.
The pool supplies work.
The user completes the work, and trades the results of that work for BTC & NMC.
The pool pays the BTC & NMC in return for the completed work.
If the results are valuable then the pool submits the results to a blockchain for a reward.
The pool executes no code on the user's machine.
The form of the work is well defined beforehand.
The user is under no obligation to ask for work, or complete it.
The result is half of a math equation (a fact) and thus not subject to copyright or patent.
The result was volunteered to the pool operator, so it is not subject to trade secret.

If you think Luke is a phallus for attacking a block chain that is fine, that is your opinion of him and you have every right to not like him for such a thing. To suggest he violated his user's trust is wrong. The user sold him a fact. The transaction was completed according to the agreed upon terms. Luke is free to use that fact in any way he sees fit. If you don't like how Luke uses facts, don't sell him any. There was (and still is) no agreement restricting Lukes use of facts.

Your spirit of the law is based on flawed presumptions. When are you going to stop presuming that every pool must offer every altcoin that can be merged mined? In another thread, I announced the creation of 100 altcoin block chains that can be merge mined from day 1. To date, all of the pools except 1 are refusing to grant their users access to these new and valuable coins.

This really boils down to different axioms that cannot be resolved, such as presumed guilt vs presumed innocence.
Luke did it, but he did it with information that his users had no claim on whatsoever.

Should he have done it? That is a far stickier question.
After warnings were not heeded, action to demonstrate is the next step. AFAIK, Luke did not doublespend any CLC, he merely forked the block chain in such a way that it is very difficult to mine. He certainly could have approached this in a less abrasive manner. He could have forked the chain, demonstrated that he could block it, and then released his hold after a patch was released to mitigate the vulnerability. He could have notified his users beforehand that he was going to use the results of their BTC hashes to demonstrate a vulnerability in another blockchain. He could have explained to his users why he would not offer merge mining of CLC until such a time as it was not vulnerable. In short, there are many things he could have done to come off as less of a phallus.

IMO all Luke is guilty of is bad public relations and an abrasive personality, not computer crimes or fraud.

I am releasing 100 alt coins with merge mining in from day one. They will all be identical to Bitcoin, except their names won't start with "Bit" and they will use different port numbers (some of them are very secure because nobody checks port 1337!). I will then sue all the pool operators who fail to give me my merge mined alt coins.

Edit: Done. All of my new altcoins are released. Why are all the pool operators stealing everyone's coins?

No, for four reasons:
First, bitcoin is not launching today. The flaw is at its worst during launch. Now it is much more difficult to execute, but not impossible. Ultimately, the security of any software relies on its users. You can't force them to follow correct protocols, and you can't prevent them from volunteering the secure information. Byzantine corruption is one of the classic problems that faces cryptography.

Second, when BTC was launched there was no pre-existing base of BTC specific hash power that could overwhelm all of the other early adopters.

Third, there was no such thing as pools of miners when BTC was launched.

Fourth, nobody knew what a cryptocurrency was, what it could be used for, or exchange it for anything other than barter. So there was no economic incentive at all to attack bitcoin. The only incentive would have been intellectual.