Bitcoin Core Developers Should Be Paid

[Armis]

Bitcoin should be a collaborative work with people contributing code, writing documentation, etc.

Who would pay the salaries? Associating private companies with Bitcoin development could be a recipe for disaster.

and so too may be the current recipe we are stewing in

the alt coin are not absolute clones of btc for a reason, most of the alt developers decided to improve on btc in various ways as you see in an earlier post one coin already solved the issue of this thread in their coin

Bitcoin it's a religion, it's a money scheme that could be used for many different purposes, and ONLY reason why it took off so fast and so high is because you can make lots of money really fast, without that motivation people leave the endeavor behind in the blink of an eye.

[FelixOliver]

Why should the Core Dev team be paid for filling what are, essentially, voluntary roles?

How different would this make them from the Global Banksters that reign over our current financial system?

The whole point of this decentralized unit of exchange, is to empower the end user... to embrace the world's un-banked... to enable us to un-apologetically dip our hands into the back pockets of the Financial Elites and claim back what has been stolen from us! ..NOT to create a new breed of Financial terrorists.

I feel that no one should be paid for fine-tuning, managing etc the Bitcoin protocol... Core Developer or not. That would be the most contradictory and morally redundant thing... anyone who advocates that, should never complain about the financial crisis that we have been oppressed by over the last 7 years.

[thms]

and so too may be the current recipe we are stewing in

the alt coin are not absolute clones of btc for a reason, most of the alt developers decided to improve on btc in various ways as you see in an earlier post one coin already solved the issue of this thread in their coin

Bitcoin it's a religion, it's a money scheme that could be used for many different purposes, and ONLY reason why it took off so fast and so high is because you can make lots of money really fast, without that motivation people leave the endeavor behind in the blink of an eye.

I don't understand what you mean.. people made money really fast without the devs being paid, so you're saying that if the devs are paid, what will happen? It doesn't make sense.

What motivation? The ability to make money with BTC as a user or being paid to develop BTC?

[Mike Hearn]

I know for a fact that several people who tend to get labelled as core developers are NOT bitcoin millionaires, so let's please throw that assumption in the bin. For example, I am not one.

Why not? Several reasons:

• Buying and selling Bitcoins early on, obviously - it would have been impossible for Bitcoin to take off had all the early adopters bought coins and then never traded anything for them.
• Conservative investment: core developers understand especially well how fragile Bitcoin really is. Look at the recent huff over malleable transactions. Seems a lot of people were taken by surprise there, even though it'd been discussed in development circles for a long time. Well, unfortunately there are more such surprises lurking. People who understand the infrastructure tend not to want to put all their eggs into it
• Being a Bitcoin millionaire could be incredibly risky in future, not only for yourself but for the people around you. Bitcoin represents the first time that people own large quantities of a highly extortable asset. Kidnappings don't work well with traditional currencies given even remotely competent law enforcement, because bank transfers can be traced and rolled back, and cash transfers require the kidnappers to physically walk into a law-enforcement controlled area to pick up the money so they tend to have a poor track record of success (read the whole story for context).

Also, remember that most of the people doing core work could easily get very well paid jobs at major tech companies. The amount of money required to be competitive with those salaries is quite significant.

The kidnapping issue worries me. We don't have any solutions for that at the moment, we just coast on herd immunity obtained from the banking system. Secure hardware that enforces withdrawal and transfer rules might be one way to go, but it's complex to set up and requires significant infrastructure. I plan to write more on this topic in future.

[Armis]

and so too may be the current recipe we are stewing in

the alt coin are not absolute clones of btc for a reason, most of the alt developers decided to improve on btc in various ways as you see in an earlier post one coin already solved the issue of this thread in their coin

Bitcoin it's a religion, it's a money scheme that could be used for many different purposes, and ONLY reason why it took off so fast and so high is because you can make lots of money really fast, without that motivation people leave the endeavor behind in the blink of an eye.

I don't understand what you mean.. people made money really fast without the devs being paid, so you're saying that if the devs are paid, what will happen? It doesn't make sense.

What motivation? The ability to make money with BTC as a user or being paid to develop BTC?

dude, you took everything out of context, I invite you to go back to the post that I was replying to when I provided my comment to get the proper perspective.

[gmaxwell]

and coin owners get to vote

By this you mean miners, since they can exclude from the consensus votes which they do not like. Bitcoin like systems, at least, are not jamming proof networks.

[Kluge]

It seems easy enough to solve by devs, but there's really no reason for us non-contributors to even discuss. It's a very intimidating and time-consuming task to donate to "Bitcoin QT contributors" right now. There's more than a small handful of contributers, with individual contributions difficult to determine because most people just don't see them listed (or have the slightest idea of how to fairly contribute). There isn't a simple address you can send to in QT/d.

If I want to support Armory, I click the "donate to Armory development" button right in the client. If I want to donate to CGWatcher, I simply set how many minutes per day I want CGWatcher to send hashpower wherever Justin has it pointed -- it's right in the client and very simple to set up. I want to donate to a pool, I just set my donation % -- it's all very easy. The problem is clearly in the difficulty trying to fairly distribute donations to "QT/d." If devs can't agree on how this should be implemented/distributed, that's not really our problem or fault, and donations aren't going to come in at anywhere near the number they should. It can't be said that it's an issue with users not wanting to contribute when it hasn't been effectively tried, and I think going to corporations and semi-corporations like the Bitcoin Foundation for salary is a dangerous, half-baked plan which threatens the entire protocol (generally -- not in every case, perhaps).

If it's an unsolvable problem with QT/d, then I'd suggest developers who want to continue working on QT/d splinter off and either work with another client which allows them to easily be contributed to or start their own client. As far as protocol development goes, I think BIPs are widely-publicized enough where contributors can simply ask for donations on the announcement page.

[Armis]

and coin owners get to vote

By this you mean miners, since they can exclude from the consensus votes which they do not like. Bitcoin like systems, at least, are not jamming proof networks.

the more shenanigans that take place the less stable and reliable the cryptocurrency will be, if the system requires perfect security in order to move it won't move. 

[ABISprotocol]

The point is, as the Bitcoin economy grows, as more people and businesses come to rely upon it, the importance of maintaining the underlying network and protocol grows in the same degree. (...) In short, Bitcoin core developers should be paid!

This discussion isn't unique to bitcoin, of course.  The same questions come up when discussing how to address any free, open source software project. See some recent efforts to address this, at:

https://whispersystems.org/blog/bithub/

and

http://tip4commit.com/ (as the name implies...)  also, <ahem> http://tip4commit.com/projects/2 bitcoin/bitcoin is there.

older stuff: http://www.donationcoder.com/Articles/One/index.html

more discussion, related in some ways:  https://github.com/ABISprotocol/ABIS/issues/1

p.s.:  if this comment helped you in some way, please donate to our project here: http://abis.io

[bg002h]

I wouldn't call the core dev team centralized in any way.

It is extremely centralized, if Gavin gets hit by a bus what is the plan? Last time I asked this there was no plan. Do you want to send FUD, just capture theymos and Gavin then I can use the alert keys to send FUD.

Stop feeding the trolls...

[gmaxwell]

It is extremely centralized, if Gavin gets hit by a bus what is the plan? Last time I asked this there was no plan.

We morn and continue on, we've done releases without Gavin. There is no part of the process which is dead in the water without him. Access and records are shared among multiple people.

Do you want to send FUD, just capture theymos and Gavin then I can use the alert keys to send FUD.

Anyone with the alert key can send a maximum sequence alert which overrides all other alerts and plays a hard-coded message that the alert key has been compromised... though it's not like anyone really notices or pays attention to alerts.

[ABISprotocol]

Wow.  So, whole point of this post was to spread FUD (more or less, and to spawn another Coindesk article)?
Well played, folks, well played.

Might I add for those reading through this for the first time and who are actually looking for an answer:

Please go here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=480959.msg5318437#msg5318437

(Insert shameless statement of self promotion here directing you to my signature below.)

Cheers

[H.Badger]

This is an issue that is being addressed in MemoryCoin. A percentage of newly mined coins are set aside for salaries and coin owners get to vote on who receives the salaries. Everything is controlled in the blockchain so it's fully decentralised.

Ah, a positive step toward a potential solution.
Thank you, FreeTrade

[H.Badger]

Why should the Core Dev team be paid for filling what are, essentially, voluntary roles?

How different would this make them from the Global Banksters that reign over our current financial system?

The whole point of this decentralized unit of exchange, is to empower the end user... to embrace the world's un-banked... to enable us to un-apologetically dip our hands into the back pockets of the Financial Elites and claim back what has been stolen from us! ..NOT to create a new breed of Financial terrorists.

I feel that no one should be paid for fine-tuning, managing etc the Bitcoin protocol... Core Developer or not. That would be the most contradictory and morally redundant thing... anyone who advocates that, should never complain about the financial crisis that we have been oppressed by over the last 7 years.

When can you start work, FelixOliver?
How many hours per month are you willing to volunteer?
Do you have the necessary skill set?

[H.Badger]

A few posts have expressed the concern that a reward the developers plan may involve a tendency toward centralization.  H.Badger concurs that this plan should not require a central authority.
As such the first item in the Requirements Document is entered as follows:

Reward the Developers Initiative
Requirements Document
1)  The distributed, decentralized attribute of the Bitcoin network is sacrosanct and shall not be infringed upon.
2)


This system can be funded easily by earmarking a small fraction of the transaction fees toward this end.  In just the last 24 hours approximately $800K in transaction fees were collected.

The challenge appears to be in storing and distributing the funds.  Ideally payment would not require human intervention but since this is a quality and significance of work decision, that may not be possible. 

One guy created the entire Bitcoin protocol, we should be able to find a way to fund one facet of it.