Care about Bitcoin? STAY AWAY from the "Bitcoin Fundation"

[eb3full]

shad0wbitz I think you are stressing out for nothing. What kind of power do you think the foundation will have over bitcoin?

I don't know. MtGox has been known to block accounts that were funded with bitcoin that they consider "Tainted". So you tell me. It is on the foundation letter that they plan to start a "Bitcoin verification process" and make sure these businesses are within guidelines. So what happen to the little guy that can't afford the certification, or simply wants to do things differently?

I think the community at a minimum should read their material, and I think you will quickly find that this is less benign and un-intrusive than what people think, or the board will have you think.

The verification process is to prevent people from creating fake accounts. You are really reaching here.

Answer this for me: Before an unelected team of developers directed the project, and now you have the opportunity to actually influence the decisions and composition of the development team. Can you honestly say you have lost influence? Couldn't you simply recognize this as a more efficient structure for the dev team?

If you're just scared about involving the industry in decision making, maybe you should consider the fact that a vast number of entities with direct financial interest in Bitcoin already have enormous power over the currency (the miners) and the developers of Bitcoin are, to some extent, beholden to them already. Shouldn't this concern you equally?

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[Come-from-Beyond]

shad0wbitz I think you are stressing out for nothing. What kind of power do you think the foundation will have over bitcoin?

shad0wbitz is absolutely right. Bitcoiners do not need the Foundation. Coz this will lead to centralization and death of Bitcoin. We r strong when we r separated.

[shad0wbitz]

The verification process is to prevent people from creating fake accounts. You are really reaching here.

Answer this for me: Before an unelected team of developers directed the project, and now you have the opportunity to actually influence the decisions and composition of the development team. Can you honestly say you have lost influence? Couldn't you simply recognize this as a more efficient structure for the dev team?

If you're just scared about involving the industry in decision making, maybe you should consider the fact that a vast number of entities with direct financial interest in Bitcoin already have enormous power over the currency (the miners) and the developers of Bitcoin are, to some extent, beholden to them already. Shouldn't this concern you equally?

I am not talking about individual verifications, I am talking they are saying they will offer a "Business certification" along with guidelines that need to be followed. Read that letter. I am not reaching.

I honestly prefer an UNELECTED board of developers that love bitcoin for bitcoin, than an UNELECTED board comprised mainly from people that make a lot of money out of bitcoin and move at least 80% of the market.

[eb3full]

I am not talking about individual verifications, I am talking they are saying they will offer a "Business certification" along with guidelines that need to be followed. Read that letter. I am not reaching.

I honestly prefer an UNELECTED board of developers that love bitcoin for bitcoin, than an UNELECTED board comprised mainly from people that make a lot of money out of bitcoin and move at least 80% of the market.

Guidelines for businesses to follow as far as best practices are concerned? The guidelines are not forced on you and they mean something to you (and others) so long as they are found credible. It is likely these best practices could be expanded upon by other entities in the future. The developers of Bitcoin are probably in the best position to recommend how it is used, especially with security in mind.

Because you think the developers "love bitcoin for bitcoin" doesn't mean others do, or that they always will. In fact it would appear irresponsible for them to avoid public accountability and additional participation from the outside. It is not centralization but cohesion to involve others democratically.

[BadBear]

He's got legitimate concerns, and it's not over nothing.

We can help solve or mitigate these problems as a community. My hope is that the Bitcoin Foundation will be the organization that focuses and unlocks all of your energy and talents towards promoting Bitcoins, protecting them, and increasing their legitimacy through standardization.

There’s a huge amount of support for the Foundation from many of the people who matter to Bitcoin’s future: Charlie Shrem, Mark Karpeles, Gavin Andresen and Jon Matonis are all starting out on the Board of Directors. Roger Ver has announced a significant donation to the Foundation as a way to get our budget launched, Mark Karpeles at Mt. Gox has signed up for the first Platinum membership, and I expect others will follow shortly. BitInstant and CoinLab have also signed up as Corporate Members. This sort of support before launch is super encouraging; I look forward to seeing more participation as we launch and get the word out.

Talk of standardization, and MtGox and BitInstant mentioned in the very next paragraph as the Board of Directors. MtGox's history of seizing tainted coins, and requiring id after allowing users to deposit make me feel really uncomfortable with the whole standards thing. Oh, and this next part is spiffy.  

So, what will we be doing in 2013 with the Bitcoin Foundation? We’ve set our eyes on accomplishing the following things:

    Begin to pay Gavin’s salary and get him some budget for the core development team
    Run a payments-oriented Silicon Valley Bitcoin Conference in the spring (Bitcoin 2013)
    Publish a set of best practices for businesses transacting in Bitcoin, covering topics from accounting to physical and digital security
    Create an opt-in certification process for Bitcoin businesses

Oh good, so now the dev team's salary is being paid by these companies and "donations". Hopefully the standards don't find their way into the next bitcoin client. I probably won't be joining.

Answer this for me: Before an unelected team of developers directed the project, and now you have the opportunity to actually influence the decisions and composition of the development team. Can you honestly say you have lost influence? Couldn't you simply recognize this as a more efficient structure for the dev team?

Somebody gained influence. It wasn't me, wasn't him, most likely wasn't you either.

[greyhawk]

Oh good, so now the dev team's salary is being paid by these companies and "donations". 

That's essentially a direct copy of what Linux Foundation is doing. They're paying Torvalds to maintain the kernel.

[repentance]

Bitcoin is software and is encumbered by a number of challenges better faced by organization and fluidity. The current design (a loose-knit team of developers, unelected, who could very carefully and anonymously backdoor the software) is not ideal, they have to be much more conservative with changes and have less talent and research to draw upon when making decisions or planning a direction for the project. This foundation is adding a presence to the development cycle, allowing people to fund its development and have a direct voice.

+1

[Spekulatius]

So far I can see three problems here:

1. The "to be or not to be"-issue:

Is it better to have such an entity to promote and advocate bitcoin in public and before lawmakers and journalists? Or should we better stay an anonymous mass without a "face" to stay strong and make the public image not dependant of success or faliure of a single entity (you could call it the "Julian Assange Effect". If I say "we" I mean the community but also respect the decisions and judgement of the members of the board of Bitcoin Foundation over their foundation.

2. The "influence"-issue:

If we want such an entity, how can we keep transparency and public participation opportunities as clear and accessible as possible? Who's got the say?
Do we want a divergence of voting power in contrast to the total userbase in favour of a certain interest group like business owners (2 votes representing businesses that make up less than 5% (data guessed) of the total userbase, while only giving also 2 votes to "representatives" of the remaining 95% of the userbase) ?

3. The "perception"-issue

Some posts in this thread seem to view the Bitcoin Foundation already as a "bitcoin government", combining major powers over the source code and financial power in form of two big (if not biggest in terms of turn around) companies in the bitcoin economy. These worries are justified in my oppinion till it is clear how the foundation works, what powers it really has and what perception of it remains in the community and public oppinion.
I would nevertheless refrain from overestimating any such influence unless it is excerted over decisions concerning the source code that sway from the objective best for the entire current and potential future userbase.

I would therefore like to suggest for the core developers to think over their active role in the board, to prevent any influence over their judgements concerning their work on the source code and reference client and instead consider an advisary role to the board.

I also endorse the fund to pay Gavin's (and all core dev's) salary from voluntary donations made by Foundation members. This way all donors and donations are transparent.

[BadBear]

Oh good, so now the dev team's salary is being paid by these companies and "donations". 

That's essentially a direct copy of what Linux Foundation is doing. They're paying Torvalds to maintain the kernel.

Hopefully it works out. If it were just that, I wouldn't be worried too much. They could have been donating to them all this time and it's just now more transparent. Hopefully they don't gain any more real powers and things just stay optional. If the licenses are unreasonable people may just not use or expect them.

[kwoody]

A core foundation like this would only take away from the decentralized attractiveness of the network as a whole. Fuck paying for membership. Membership should be open to anybody who actively participates in the project via mining, developing, or even simply sending and receiving coins. Gavin and other core developers will be paid for the hard work they do to ensure a reasonably stable system for everyone in the community to use; this is the only part I agree with.

Do not exclude the lifeblood(community) of the network from making decisions which directly affect the network.

[jgarzik]

The current design (a loose-knit team of developers, unelected, who could very carefully and anonymously backdoor the software) is not ideal,

This sounds like an excellent opportunity for education

Why is the above not true?

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.

[justusranvier]

I'm currently undecided as to the importance of this announcement but at the same time I don't understand where all the hate comes from. People who don't want to participate don't have to participate. What's the big deal? Maybe the people who are protesting the "centralization" in an apparent knee-jerk fashion don't understand how easy it is to fork a git repository.

[GernMiester]

Another way to take BTC from people. STOP TRUSTING BTC SITES AND PEOPLE.
If they guy down the road said he will keep you money safe would you give it all to him? But tools hand over BTC all day long then whine when they are taken.

[fbastage]

Paranoid or not, I think it's right to scrutinize (self-appointed) organizations.  Some eventually grow and amass the power to make or break other businesses and violate the very principles they once espoused.

A few examples:  the MPAA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Film_Is_Not_Yet_Rated), the Better Business Bureau.. I'm sure we can all think of others.

[justusranvier]

Paranoid or not, I think it's right to scrutinize (self-appointed) organizations.  Some eventually grow and amass the power to make or break other businesses and violate the very principles they once espoused.

How?

[fbastage]

Paranoid or not, I think it's right to scrutinize (self-appointed) organizations.  Some eventually grow and amass the power to make or break other businesses and violate the very principles they once espoused.

How?

by amassing influence, power, money, relationships.  and then abusing those, like any other organization might if/when it becomes within their interest to do so.

[theymos]

Answer this for me: Before an unelected team of developers directed the project, and now you have the opportunity to actually influence the decisions and composition of the development team. Can you honestly say you have lost influence? Couldn't you simply recognize this as a more efficient structure for the dev team?

The Foundation could create more democratic influence in the development of the bitcoin.org client, which I wouldn't like. The developers should decide what the client should do. I definitely wouldn't want to see a Bitcoin Foundation vote about something like P2SH.

I'll probably join. Like it or not, the Foundation's activities will be important, and I'd like to have a vote. I'm somewhat optimistic about it.

[justusranvier]

Paranoid or not, I think it's right to scrutinize (self-appointed) organizations.  Some eventually grow and amass the power to make or break other businesses and violate the very principles they once espoused.

How?

by amassing influence, power, money, relationships.  and then abusing those, like any other organization might if/when it becomes within their interest to do so.

That's not an answer, it's a barely articulated expression of anxiety.

What specifically are you worried about?

[Polvos]

I'm currently undecided as to the importance of this announcement but at the same time I don't understand where all the hate comes from. People who don't want to participate don't have to participate. What's the big deal? Maybe the people who are protesting the "centralization" in an apparent knee-jerk fashion don't understand how easy it is to fork a git repository.

I don't know why, but you can call me a "classic libertarian". I always complain when I see anonymity or decentralization of the bitcoin network in danger. The same way I complain when MtGox uses his monopolistic possition in the market and freezes people accounts by orders of a hidden tainted bitcoin list. The same way I complain when pools get too much mining power.

[justusranvier]

I don't know why, but you can call me a "classic libertarian". I always complain when I see anonymity or decentralization of the bitcoin network in danger. The same way I complain when MtGox uses his monopolistic possition in the market and freezes people accounts by orders of a hidden tainted bitcoin list. The same way I complain when pools get too much mining power.

I would understand this position if someone could explain what exactly the danger is.

I understand if someone doesn't like the business practices of Mt Gox, but that's not an existential threat to Bitcoin itself. A single entity with >50% can cause harm to the rest of the network in well-documented ways so I understand that concern.

What specifically could this foundation do if it was malicious that everybody's so worried about? So far all I can see is a superstituous fear of the word "centralization".