[ANN] Bitcoin Foundation

[jgarzik]

I just think they're going about solutions the wrong way. If you truly believe in Bitcoin then you believe in its own inherent abilities to foster its success. Its strength is that it's decentralized, and relies on the community to provide what it needs in a free market way.

That is precisely what is happening:  part of that community is banding together, in a free market opt-in way, to collectively fill in the basic gaps -- like actually paying devs for their time, or paying for testing -- because that is otherwise not happening right now.

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[Phinnaeus Gage]

Satoshi is in the bylaws of the foundation and the founding member.

I'm sorry, but how can he be a "founding member" of something founded after he ... "disappeared"?

I'm afraid I can't find these bylaws. Is there a link?

Ya, should be posted on the website in a few days.

I'ts not difficult to list someone as a founding member even if they "disappeared"

Hey, that means you have his real name and adress on file. 

Looks like BF is in a quagmire here. To use the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto would most definitely negate that real names are required. To not use his name, pseudonym or real, would be leaving out the key founder. Then again SN could contact Gavin and state that he doesn't want to mentioned as a founder. If that were the case, then SN can not be mentioned anywhere on Bitcoin Foundation's website.

I look forward to reading how this plays out.

So far, I hate and love this foundation at the same time. I will become a member to further the cause, though.

I noticed the membership dues are in BTC. Great! But what mechanisms are in place if BTC doubles or triples, let's say, within the coming weeks (months)? A lifetime membership will jump from $250 to $500 or $750 (or more), and at the same token, a Platinum Membership could easily exceed a quarter of a millions dollars (US).

~Bruno~

[acoindr]

I just think they're going about solutions the wrong way. If you truly believe in Bitcoin then you believe in its own inherent abilities to foster its success. Its strength is that it's decentralized, and relies on the community to provide what it needs in a free market way.

That is precisely what is happening:  part of that community is banding together, in a free market opt-in way, to collectively fill in the basic gaps -- like actually paying devs for their time, or paying for testing -- because that is otherwise not happening right now.

So my question would be is this currently sufficient to meet development compensation needs?

I don't think it is. But I don't think a foundation is the only way to address that. There are projects on Kickstarter.com that raise hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars (http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/most-funded) that don't have anywhere near the scope and impact of something like Bitcoin.

As I posted, crowdsourcing developer compensation shouldn't be a problem. If it has been before now, maybe it's only because the need wasn't made known.

[kwoody]

Gavin has been replaced by a CIA look-a-like.

Not really, but what would stop the CIA from doing this?

The problem with "putting a face" on Bitcoin..? it's like painting a bullseye on your face and saying "hey, I'm here, shoot me".

[Herodes]

I have mixed feelings in relation to this announcement as well, but I'll point out one thing, look at the calm of Gavin, he's probably busy hacking a way at the bitcoin source code right now. When he made the announcement, he made a couple of other posts after that, and then silence.

He knows what kind of reactions there will be on the forum, and he does not waste his time with drama. He's perhaps one of the more level headed figures in the entire community, but then again, who knows what happened behind closed doors in the CIA-meeting. 

[acoindr]

Gavin has been replaced by a CIA look-a-like.

Not really, but what would stop the CIA from doing this?

The problem with "putting a face" on Bitcoin..? it's like painting a bullseye on your face and saying "hey, I'm here, shoot me".

True. That's another problem with centralization. Even if there is little to no corruption or abuse of power. It gives enemies a place to attack - precisely another way Bitcoin draws strength from decentralization. This is all stuff Bitcoin's value is based upon. Again, this isn't trivial stuff.

[acoindr]

Hey everyone, I'm logging off for the day.

My suggestion: The Foundation should put everything on PAUSE. If it truly needs to exist/go forward, doing so a little later shouldn't make much difference. But the alternative could be damaging. In the meantime, start some more OPEN discussion about solutions to currently perceived Bitcoin progress problems.

[ChrisKoss]

I noticed the membership dues are in BTC. Great! But what mechanisms are in place if BTC doubles or triples, let's say, within the coming weeks (months)? A lifetime membership will jump from $250 to $500 or $750 (or more), and at the same token, a Platinum Membership could easily exceed a quarter of a millions dollars (US).

They plan to re-target prices every 6 months.  If you think the price is about to spike, you should get your membership now while its cheap

[BkkCoins]

IMO I see a couple major problems with the foundation. Maybe this will be clarified when bylaws are published.

- The control of what gets coded by devs into the client (the defacto protocol) needs to be decoupled 100% from the foundation board and monetary/political interests. I see this being pretty hard to achieve when the foundation pays the salaries. What's the famous quote about someone always seeing things in alignment with who pays their salary?

- It was formed in a country that believes it's own laws to be enforceable world wide. What is the foundations view on laws that the USA holds but other countries do not? Are they going to align Bitcoin, through alterations to the client, to the full extent of US law only? For example, tax evasion is not an offense in Switzerland (at least to my last reckoning) but is the most egregious offense in the USA. If someone doesn't report their Bitcoin holdings or income how will the foundation respond to government pressure to install tracking in the client? Will they fight it briefly, not at all, or disband entirely?

Most organizations would rather bend under authority than risk their own demise , or just close their doors. If you think having control over the devs doesn't mean they can manipulate the client then you're wrong. There are devious, tricky ways of pushing forward what they want to happen to Bitcoin. They might take US congress as an example and push multiple changes into a release where some are desirable enough that many users would ignore the undesirables changes. They might make a release no longer work with some older releases such that a gradual fading of freedoms encroaches upon users.

You might say, "Well, none of this has happened yet", but given the powers likely to rise against Bitcoin and the pressures that will manifest it is only a matter of when. My question is will these types of control be defined in the bylaws? Will the foundation close it's doors rather than become an arm of the state? And not just any state but the worst military / corporate state today.

I don't know whether to think that the people behind forming this foundation are naive, in that they don't know what pressures they will come under, or secretly power hunger, in that they fully plan to manipulate Bitcoin into a docile puppy under the heel of law, just or not, to fully realize monetary gain.

I got involved with Bitcoin because of the philosophy and it appears this is a step in rewriting that philosophy, and as usual, for the gain of a few monied interests.

[ChrisKoss]

As I posted, crowdsourcing developer compensation shouldn't be a problem. If it has been before now, maybe it's only because the need wasn't made known.

What if Gavin would rather write code than beg?  He's gone a long time without compensation, and a crowd-sourced solution hasn't come together yet.  

Personally, I'd love to see a decentralized system for rewarding contributions to Open Source Software projects, but I don't know a way to securely and accurately measure the proportional contributions of different developers: any decentralized system would be vulnerable to a sybil attack.   If you have solved this problem, please start a thread with how to do it, and I'll do whatever I can to help.

I can't speak for Gavin, but I'm pretty sure he'd be happy to accept any Bitcoins you raise to thank him for his contributions to the Bitcoin codebase (provided there are no strings attached).

[jgarzik]

So my question would be is this currently sufficient to meet development compensation needs?

I don't think it is. But I don't think a foundation is the only way to address that. There are projects on Kickstarter.com that raise hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars (http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/most-funded) that don't have anywhere near the scope and impact of something like Bitcoin.

As I posted, crowdsourcing developer compensation shouldn't be a problem. If it has been before now, maybe it's only because the need wasn't made known.

There is a cool bitcoin KickStarter feature, just waiting for someone to employ:  Create a transaction that (say) sends 10500 BTC to Gavin, with SIGHASH_ANYONECANPAY marker.  Send it around.  Anyone may add a signature... but the transaction is not valid until the inputs reach 10500 BTC.

However, for now, a foundation is the method that has proved successful in providing ongoing developer funding for other open source projects, even as funding sources themselves come and go.

Even KickStarter does not provide ongoing funding, only bursts.  Not the model of stability that an engineer wants to raise a family on...

[ChrisKoss]

Hey everyone, I'm logging off for the day.

My suggestion: The Foundation should put everything on PAUSE. If it truly needs to exist/go forward, doing so a little later shouldn't make much difference.

Why should the Foundation put everything on hold until you agree that they're doing the right thing?  I thought Bitcoin was a decentralized ecosystem of organizations and individuals which can operate without needing constant bureaucratic approval from others on every decision... 

In the meantime, start some more OPEN discussion about solutions to currently perceived Bitcoin progress problems.

*facepalm*  You do realize, that's like, the first thing they are trying to do... 

[jgarzik]

IMO I see a couple major problems with the foundation. Maybe this will be clarified when bylaws are published.

- The control of what gets coded by devs into the client (the defacto protocol) needs to be decoupled 100% from the foundation board and monetary/political interests. I see this being pretty hard to achieve when the foundation pays the salaries. What's the famous quote about someone always seeing things in alignment with who pays their salary?

(bits copied from other thread)

I think you are missing how bitcoin software development works right now.  All source code is open, and widely reviewed.  We make it easy to fork the code, and find a better way than our own.  The moment Gavin or anyone else introduces code the community dislikes, the code will get forked and the community ignores the changes.

Nothing in bitcoin happens without the consent of the majority of users, and that is by design.

The bitcoin design is used and trusted because it is open and available for deep study.  Nobody needed to know who Satoshi was -- they only needed full access to the software, for review.

For the technically minded, there are further processes in place to guard against hackers, or evil CIA-funded developers, adding backdoors to bitcoin:

• Other bitcoin client implementations exist, besides the "reference client" originally written by Satoshi
• For the source code, we use git.  Just like the bitcoin block chain, git is a chain of hashes.  Each and every change is protected by a hash.  Anyone following git in a decentralized fashion may see and verify all changes.  Any "back door" is quite public.
• For the binaries, we use gitian, so that outside parties may independently verify dev team binaries precisely match their locally-built binaries.  Bitcoin binaries from the dev team are not published until multiple sig matches appear.

[kwoody]

I'll ask yet again. Who is Peter Vessenes and why does he get to represent the Bitcoin community? Was Gavin instructed by the CIA to make this "foundation"?

I'll give it 4-5 years tops before Gavin finds himself on the wrong end of a .50 cal dragonov's crosshairs, unless he's working with/for "the man" now.

[beckspace]

• For the source code, we use git.  Just like the bitcoin block chain, git is a chain of hashes.  Each and every change is protected by a hash.  Anyone following git in a decentralized fashion may see and verify all changes.  Any "back door" is quite public.
• For the binaries, we use gitian, so that outside parties may independently verify dev team binaries precisely match their locally-built binaries.  Bitcoin binaries from the dev team are not published until multiple sig matches appear.

This.

Wikipedia on git:

Linus Torvalds had several design criteria:

3. Very strong safeguards against corruption, either accidental or malicious.

[jgarzik]

I'll ask yet again. Who is Peter Vessenes and why does he get to represent the Bitcoin community? Was Gavin instructed by the CIA to make this "foundation"?

https://www.bitcoinfoundation.org/about/board gives some info.

As to CIA silliness:  if you cannot trust code written by a pseudonymous individual named Satoshi with unknown backing (CIA? NWO? Taco Bell? who knows?), it is not likely you will trust a lead developer using his real identity.

I'll give it 4-5 years tops before Gavin finds himself on the wrong end of a .50 cal dragonov's crosshairs, unless he's working with/for "the man" now.

*plonk*  into the Atlas file with you.

[Atlas]

• For the source code, we use git.  Just like the bitcoin block chain, git is a chain of hashes.  Each and every change is protected by a hash.  Anyone following git in a decentralized fashion may see and verify all changes.  Any "back door" is quite public.
• For the binaries, we use gitian, so that outside parties may independently verify dev team binaries precisely match their locally-built binaries.  Bitcoin binaries from the dev team are not published until multiple sig matches appear.

This.

Wikipedia on git:

Linus Torvalds had several design criteria:

3. Very strong safeguards against corruption, either accidental or malicious.

Is having a developer with an undisclosed report to the CIA a good way to meet this goal?[/list]

[ChrisKoss]

- The control of what gets coded by devs into the client (the defacto protocol) needs to be decoupled 100% from the foundation board and monetary/political interests. I see this being pretty hard to achieve when the foundation pays the salaries. What's the famous quote about someone always seeing things in alignment with who pays their salary?

If you don't like the decisions Gavin has made, you should start contributing to the Bitcoin source code.  Gavin has clout purely because he has a long history as a level-headed contributing member of the Bitcoin community and codebase.  He's a rockstar developer, and the more rockstar developers we have working on Bitcoin, the less power any one dev will have (plus, everyone holding Bitcoins benefits from a more rapid dev cycle).  If you write better code than him, you'll become the new lead core dev. Please do try, we'll all be better off for it.

Gavin isn't Bitcoin.  The Foundation isn't Bitcoin.  No single entity is Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the sum of all the parts.  If you're worried about there being too much power in one place, don't weaken what's working well, add new power somewhere else.

I'm quite shocked that so many people are against Gavin being compensated now, after he's put so much time into this project for free.  

- It was formed in a country that believes it's own laws to be enforceable world wide. What is the foundations view on laws that the USA holds but other countries do not? Are they going to align Bitcoin, through alterations to the client, to the full extent of US law only? For example, tax evasion is not an offense in Switzerland (at least to my last reckoning) but is the most egregious offense in the USA. If someone doesn't report their Bitcoin holdings or income how will the foundation respond to government pressure to install tracking in the client? Will they fight it briefly, not at all, or disband entirely?

Most organizations would rather bend under authority than risk their own demise , or just close their doors. If you think having control over the devs doesn't mean they can manipulate the client then you're wrong. There are devious, tricky ways of pushing forward what they want to happen to Bitcoin. They might take US congress as an example and push multiple changes into a release where some are desirable enough that many users would ignore the undesirables changes. They might make a release no longer work with some older releases such that a gradual fading of freedoms encroaches upon users.

If you think the USA isn't a good place for a foundation, start your own one in Switzerland. The cool thing about decentralized peer-to-peer project is there will never be an "official" Foundation.  Every organization that helps advance Bitcoin can be judged on merit, and people can choose which ones they want to support. This foundation is kind of a big deal because the biggest companies in the Bitcoin ecosystem are throwing their weight behind it, but it doesn't mean a different foundation couldn't grow even larger than this one someday.

If you're worried about the direction of BF, become a member and make your voice heard.  The Foundation wants you to be a part of their decision making process.

[beckspace]

Is having a developer with an undisclosed report to the CIA a good way to meet this goal?

Yes. We have walk in the harshest of the environments in order to thrive. A strong protocol makes talking to CIA trivial.

gitian.org:

Get people away from downloading untrusted binaries

[ChrisKoss]

I'll ask yet again. Who is Peter Vessenes and why does he get to represent the Bitcoin community? Was Gavin instructed by the CIA to make this "foundation"?

I'll give it 4-5 years tops before Gavin finds himself on the wrong end of a .50 cal dragonov's crosshairs, unless he's working with/for "the man" now.

You've been watching too many movies  

Peter Vessenes is the CEO of CoinLab.  I think the founding members had a vote or discussion or something to decide.

He represents the Bitcoin Foundation.  All of us, (even, *sigh* these forums: thieves, scams, and all) represent the Bitcoin community.