[ANN] Bitcoin Foundation

[flower1024]

+111111111111

Gavin
Keep moving forward. You are doing a fantastic job. Don't get sidetracked by a few  critics. Most people here support you and even if not , they can create their own foundation or club.

i do support the bitcoin foundation
i just (and only) have the fear that mtgox uses this power to convince all bitcoin businness to copy his definition of tainted coins.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

+111111111111
Gavin
Keep moving forward. You are doing a fantastic job. Don't get sidetracked by a few  critics. Most people here support you and even if not , they can create their own foundation or club.

Sidetracked ? You are not listening to the critics at all man. You simply don't get it.

I think that the foundation is good and important thing, but why not fix some bugs while the thing is small. After the foundation grows big, it will be more difficult to make important changes.

Here is the list of bugs to be (potentially) fixed:

1. The name "The Bitcoin Foundation" wrongly suggest that it is the central authority that controls Bitcoin.
2. The hosting company of the BitcoinFoundation.org is (with high probability) a Government-run honeypot.
3. There is no safe way for people to have a vote in the Foundation without giving up their identities (which could prove fatal in case of Bitcoin users are declared terrorists, or government tries to confiscate Bitcoins from them).
4. Lack of clear privacy policy. No mention about security of member's personal data (are the servers encrypted or whatever).
6. The organization is not for profit which means it can't go bankrupt should it provide a crappy service as long as big businesses are prepared to open their purse they can operate indefinitely. (a scary thought)
7. The foundation servers are in US, making it trivial for FED & law enforcement to raid them & gather all TBF member data.

(optional) - The CEO of MtGox (with all the problems with anonymity, taint listing, AML shit, KYC shit and arbitrary account freezing in this exchanger) is a founder.
(optional) - The lead dev who owns the git access and is a founding member and a member of the board of directors for the next two years is a conflict of interest.

Not listening to critics is not a good thing. It's like dictatorial stance "we don't give a fuck about what you think, we will do what we want".
I also know that Gavin probably has me on his ignore list, because he never answers any of my posts directed at him, which is also not very nice.

If Gavin does not want (or does not have time, he is lead dev after all) to answer our criticism, he should at least delegate somebody to "scan" the forums to check what people's opinions are, and then answer them collectively on a blog or something.

[niko]

+111111111111

Gavin
Keep moving forward. You are doing a fantastic job. Don't get sidetracked by a few  critics. Most people here support you and even if not , they can create their own foundation or club.

i do support the bitcoin foundation
i just (and only) have the fear that mtgox uses this power to convince all bitcoin businness to copy his definition of tainted coins.

Why are you afraid of it? Did you steal anyone's wallet?

[Atlas]

+111111111111

Gavin
Keep moving forward. You are doing a fantastic job. Don't get sidetracked by a few  critics. Most people here support you and even if not , they can create their own foundation or club.

i do support the bitcoin foundation
i just (and only) have the fear that mtgox uses this power to convince all bitcoin businness to copy his definition of tainted coins.

Why are you afraid of it? Did you steal anyone's wallet?

Yeah, are you one of those terrorists? If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide.

Now let me check your genitals for STDs.

[ChrisKoss]

+111111111111

Gavin
Keep moving forward. You are doing a fantastic job. Don't get sidetracked by a few  critics. Most people here support you and even if not , they can create their own foundation or club.

i do support the bitcoin foundation
i just (and only) have the fear that mtgox uses this power to convince all bitcoin businness to copy his definition of tainted coins.

Why are you afraid of it? Did you steal anyone's wallet?

I am a supporter of the Bitcoin Foundation, and I think taint is a horrible idea.  All proposals to implement it so far are ineffective and are more likely to hurt naive bitcoin newbies than the thieves themselves.  The people who are 'out of the know' concerning taint will accept them, giving thieves a good or service in exchange, and they'll be stuck holding the bag.

Keeping bitcoins fungible is important.

This thread isn't for debating the merits (or lack thereof) of taint. However, there are plenty of threads that cover why this a bad idea already:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=85433.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=67383.0

[niko]

+111111111111

Gavin
Keep moving forward. You are doing a fantastic job. Don't get sidetracked by a few  critics. Most people here support you and even if not , they can create their own foundation or club.

i do support the bitcoin foundation
i just (and only) have the fear that mtgox uses this power to convince all bitcoin businness to copy his definition of tainted coins.

Why are you afraid of it? Did you steal anyone's wallet?

I am a supporter of the Bitcoin Foundation, and I think taint is a horrible idea.  All proposals to implement it so far are ineffective and are more likely to hurt naive bitcoin newbies than the thieves themselves.  The people who are 'out of the know' concerning taint will accept them, giving thieves a good or service in exchange, and they'll be stuck holding the bag.

Keeping bitcoins fungible is important.

This thread isn't for debating the merits (or lack thereof) of taint. However, there are plenty of threads that cover why this a bad idea already:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=85433.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=67383.0

Oh, okay. It's semantics. If a blockchain can help identify a thief in some cases, I've got nothing against it. Calling coins "tainted" may be taking it too far. How about "blockchain forensics" then?
Moving on, back on topic. The issue of blockchain forensics is really something for the law enforcement and businesses to worry about, not the average users or miners. I agree that users and miners should be represented more on the BF board.

[Gavin Andresen]

If Gavin does not want (or does not have time, he is lead dev after all) to answer our criticism, he should at least delegate somebody to "scan" the forums to check what people's opinions are, and then answer them collectively on a blog or something.

So... if the membership agrees with your "bugs" then they'll get fixed.  Like I said, the vision is it will be a member-driven organization. And like I said, I find it is much more effective to start with something imperfect and improve it over time rather than try to get everything exactly right and make everybody completely happy at the start.

My personal opinion on the "bugs":

Name:  I like the name.  It can be changed if the membership decides on something better.

Hosting company: could easily be changed; it likely will be. I highly doubt Cloudflare is a government honeypot for anything besides catching DDoS botnet operators.

Identities/voting: Please see "Sybil Attack" for why we're requiring names, mailing addresses and emails. If you've got a magical way of identifying anonymous people please send me the source code, I could use it for the Bitcoin Faucet.

Privacy policy: fair point, there should be a privacy policy on the website.

US based: if Patrick (Foundation's lawyer) was Finnish we would probably be Finnish-based. That's the whole "perfect is the enemy of the good" thing (and I really don't want to have a month-long discussion about which legal jurisdiction is the least likely to declare Bitcoin Foundation illegal, which would be best for getting donors tax deductions, and whatever other arguments we could have).

I agree that users and miners should be represented more on the BF board.

One of the things that I think will be fascinating to watch is how users and miners organize themselves (or not) to elect people to the Board. I'm not going to pretend that the current composition of the Board is perfect-- I have no idea if some arrangement would be better. But it seems to me before making a statement like "there should be more of X on the Board" we should either get some experience under our collective belts to see how things work OR find an example of a similar, successful organization that works.

[tgmarks]

I like the initial creation that this foundation is.  Bitcoin could really benefit from this.  I will probably join myself , but wish the price was a bit cheaper for a company membership.  The current prices are a ways out of our reach, but one could hope business picks up.

[Melbustus]

... which could turn into a scenario where the ignorant masses start using a client that is inherently bad for them while the fork that would attempt to correct that can get marginalized...

Now we start to get into some interesting human-nature discussions. Ultimately, bitcoin either fails or becomes an underlying tool on top of which traditional power structures are created if the masses are truly incapable of doing *a little* research and making their own decisions. You have to have *some* level of optimistic belief in human-nature, in the ability of people to see and seek a better alternative, in order to believe that something like bitcoin will result in a monetary utopia of sorts.

As noted, organizations such as TBF operating on top of bitcoin are inevitable. I believe this one has good intentions, with people on board who largely share the decentralization ethos. But there will be other orgs down the road with perhaps not-so-good intentions. It will be up to the masses to create the demand for the best software and best ecosystem. If you do not believe the masses are at all capable of making distinctions, then game over for certain utopian visions of bitcoin. 

Off topic:

I wonder if this is how it must have been when people in America at the very beginning were arguing whether or not they need a central bank. I wonder if the same sort of attacks through the use of sophistry, trickery, fallacies and ad hominems were used against those opposed when they were warning of the dangers such an institution poses down the road.

Indeed. Would love to find some time to study that debate.

[Severian]

I don't doubt the good intentions of the people involved in TBF, but as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. 

Not to be pedantic, but the road to heaven is also paved the same way.

If TBF was stopping at just good intentions, I'd be wary. But every founding member is doing something intimately involved with Bitcoin and has every reason to better the network, the currency and the userbase, which is the same goal shared by many of us.

I gave them my btc because they're not promising anything. I also want to see Gavin get paid. Why everyone hasn't sent a few coins or few tenths of coin to the devs is a puzzle to me.

[Atlas]

The road to heaven is paved with patience and liberty.

[LightRider]

Heaven doesn't exist. Let's just try to make things less shitty for everyone.

[The_Duke]

if the membership agrees with your "bugs" then they'll get fixed.

I'm happy that I'd already made a post in the Alternative client section, because if I hadn't I would have to do it now.

What you're saying here is that if something needs fixing (be it in bitcoind, TBF's setup, or other), it will only happen if enough paying members want it. So if something needs fixing that might not be beneficial to enough paying members (even if it is vital to the majority of the userbase that is not a member), it won't get done.

We really need a full alternative, TBF independent, client. Asap.

[gyverlb]

We really need a full alternative, TBF independent, client. Asap.

Wouldn't you have the very same hypothetical problems with the developers of the alternative client?

Why would it be needed to fork or create a client asap? If there's a need and a will there will be a fork at the right time. At least every open-source project of some significance behaved like this in the past. Even a behemoth like OpenOffice was forked a mere month after Oracle announced a new strategy for OpenSolaris worried developers. And yes, it's not a typo, they acted on an OpenSolaris strategy change not an OpenOffice one, open-source developers are "naturally" wary of heavy-handed organizations (being corporations or foundations doesn't really matter...).

If you feel powerless, learn to code and to use git and hack the bitcoin client. Then if something wrong happens to the official client you'd be in a position to make a difference by forking the project yourself or help those like you who will fork it. If coding is out of the question, start putting coins in a "savings" address in case you need to pay someone to code for you.
Words on a forum won't matter, people who can and are willing to code and people helping them will. And from my point of view many are or will be in the Bitcoin Foundation...

[vuce]

We really need a full alternative, TBF independent, client. Asap.

bitcoind is the bitcoin protocol. You can't have two different protocols that would be compatible. One thing you're forgetting are the miners. If there were to be a drastic change in the protocol, at least 50% of the miners would have to agree to it, thus I don't see a problem with having one "official" client representing the protocol. For everything else (gui, taint analysis, etc), we already have several clients that follow the same protocol, and you are free to use any one of them.

[Atlas]

We really need a full alternative, TBF independent, client. Asap.

bitcoind is the bitcoin protocol. You can't have two different protocols that would be compatible. One thing you're forgetting are the miners. If there were to be a drastic change in the protocol, at least 50% of the miners would have to agree to it, thus I don't see a problem with having one "official" client representing the protocol. For everything else (gui, taint analysis, etc), we already have several clients that follow the same protocol, and you are free to use one any of them.

cbitcoin, libbitcoin, BitcoinJ will all be independent clients that implement the consensus that is the Bitcoin protocol.

[EhVedadoOAnonimato]

So... if the membership agrees with your "bugs" then they'll get fixed.  

hehe, the only caveat is that, to be a member, you already have to:

• Don't care about your privacy and anonymity that much, since you'll have to identify yourslf
• Don't care about supporting an organization whose name is a lie in itself and will likely mislead people - with the high probability of this being intentional.

So, basically, those who are concerned about such "bugs" will probably never become a member. All they can do is to lament that so many people don't give a damn about it, including people important to Bitcoin like you.
Finally, this other reply of mine also applies here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=113400.msg1225189#msg1225189

Identities/voting: Please see "Sybil Attack" for why we're requiring names, mailing addresses and emails. If you've got a magical way of identifying anonymous people please send me the source code, I could use it for the Bitcoin Faucet.

Pardon my ignorance, but how can somebody "sybil attack" it? I don't get it. Are GLBSE assets vulnerable to "sybil attack" because people can be anonymous shareholders?

If your concern is "an evil person" buying up the majority of votes and deciding everything, then please keep in mind:

• Bitcoin mining itself faces the same "risk", with a much greater impact in case it happens.
• Influent people like you could always start a new organization if somebody you don't like grabs control of this one. People would likely follow you as they're doing right now.
• At the very extreme, the bylaws could state that anonymous members as a whole don't get to have more than 49% of the votes, for example. I find this unnecessary, but it might tranquilize "unsecured" people.

[/list]

[EhVedadoOAnonimato]

bitcoind is the bitcoin protocol.

That's not 100% accurate.
bitcoind is, yet, essential to the network, since it's the only implementation capable of fully verifying the blockchain.
But even bitcoind is "smaller" than the protocol, as it does not give you the means to exploit everything the protocol can offer. The Bitcoin protocol is quite rich and broad.

[eb3full]

Bitcoin mining itself faces the same "risk", with a much greater impact in case it happens.

Not only is Gavin unlikely to humor this, it's a very disingenuous comparison. Bitcoin is at risk of a single malicious party which must afford to scale their attack against everybody else in the network, at direct opposition to the market incentive to act as an honest party. Not only is there not a market incentive to act as an honest voter in the foundation, the entry rates (2.5btc) are static and do not change based on the demand of new participants.

You simply cannot have a "1 person 1 vote" system that allows anonymous donation. Since they actually want their foundation to have credibility, they've made the right decision.

[The_Duke]

We really need a full alternative, TBF independent, client. Asap.

Wouldn't you have the very same hypothetical problems with the developers of the alternative client?

As soon as they set up something as broken as TBF, then yes.