Will the free open source Armory wallet continue to be developed going forward?

[Velkro]

Rest in Peace armory, we loved you, you never let us down, till now.
hope this project won't die

[1714876507]

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[1714876507]

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[1714876507]

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[sunnankar]

armory is the only wallet i use

Same for me   Do we need more donations or something?

Cute sentiment but I do not think you understand the type of resources required to build this type of software where individuals can generate and hold the private keys of their own wealth. Funding the building out of the core infrastructure the entire community uses has not been cheap and many people have made significant sacrifices of both time and money to get Bitcoin where it is today.

This type of cryptography and software code is complicated and to be sustainable requires very skilled developers. Projects can be maintained on a donation basis but that is usually not very sustainable without either (1) large sacrifices of opportunity cost by the developers, like the extremely poor guy who maintains PGP, or (2) a very generous and magnanimous financial benefactor. Usually it requires a combination of the two like Dr. Wuille, Dr. Adam Back thinks is one of our community's greatest assets, who took a significant pay cut to work full-time on Bitcoin.

To help you understand the magnitude; in Armory's case I and two ideologically aligned friends were the generous and magnanimous financial benefactors of the $600,000 seed round. Additionally, I solely and personally assumed, via binding legal contract, the downside of the exchange rate risk but let the upside in the Bitcoin price accrue to the company so developers would know their paychecks were going to be there and they could plan for their families. As a result, there have been over $1,000,000 of resources consumed by the project. That is many many orders of magnitude more financial support than all of the donations of the entire community combined and 10-20x more than the PGP guy's Linux grant.

And there are other wallet initiatives that have received significant financial assistance like my buddy Roger Ver who helped fund Blockchain.info and Roger and I both funded the initial seed round for Bitpay that has released the Copay wallet.

Unfortunately, great software does not just write itself yet and we should all remember that developers need to eat food, provide for families, use computers, etc. but that is not the world we live in.

[goatpig]

hope this project won't die

I won't let that happen =)

[Carlton Banks]

I was made aware of Alan Reiner's plans for Armory on Septmeber the 8th this year, and I'm not happy with this situation either. I agreed then not to reveal what he told me, but I suspect most of you will not be happy (but, only if the proposal I was informed of is what actually transpires).

I hope that they accept some version of an alternative model that I proposed, and hopefully the continuing indecision on this is a reflection of uncertainty about the September 8th proposal amongst the management of ATI.

[justusranvier]

Cute sentiment but I do not think you understand the type of resources required to build this type of software where individuals can generate and hold the private keys of their own wealth. Funding the building out of the core infrastructure the entire community uses has not been cheap and many people have made significant sacrifices of both time and money to get Bitcoin where it is today.

Of course businesses only survive by attracting paying customers, so the need of Armory to do so is clear.

I'm not sure you appreciate the way that Armory's value to potential customers changes as a result of being closed source.

I guess Alan sent out a bunch of form letter PMs in September about this change. I got one wherein he mentioned a possible "power user licence", which to me is a complete non-starter.

Even though I have no problem paying for software, I'd never buy a license for a closed-source version of Armory. Once somebody who wants to steal Bitcoins decides they can get the best bang for their buck by going after cold storage users, they are going to make a beeline to Armory to obtain that list of licensed users and/or attempt to compromise your internal source repository and insert a backdoor.

Personally, I will never use a cold storage wallet that I don't compile myself from publicly-available source. A closed-source Bitcoin wallet is a spearphisher's wet dream.

[Ente]

Cute sentiment but I do not think you understand the type of resources required to build this type of software where individuals can generate and hold the private keys of their own wealth. Funding the building out of the core infrastructure the entire community uses has not been cheap and many people have made significant sacrifices of both time and money to get Bitcoin where it is today.

Of course businesses only survive by attracting paying customers, so the need of Armory to do so is clear.

I'm not sure you appreciate the way that Armory's value to potential customers changes as a result of being closed source.

I guess Alan sent out a bunch of form letter PMs in September about this change. I got one wherein he mentioned a possible "power user licence", which to me is a complete non-starter.

Even though I have no problem paying for software, I'd never buy a license for a closed-source version of Armory. Once somebody who wants to steal Bitcoins decides they can get the best bang for their buck by going after cold storage users, they are going to make a beeline to Armory to obtain that list of licensed users and/or attempt to compromise your internal source repository and insert a backdoor.

Personally, I will never use a cold storage wallet that I don't compile myself from publicly-available source. A closed-source Bitcoin wallet is a spearphisher's wet dream.

Ah, if we only had some kind of technology to pay anonymously, via the internet..
:-P
(true, the software surely won't be open source, and/or wants to regularly call home. Both huge risks for such a preselected usergroup)

Ente

[solitude]

So Armory is kill?

[bitpop]

Not sounding good. I hope you take care to warn Armory users not to upgrade to latest Bitcoin Core 0.11.1.

Why?

[BitcoinNewsMagazine]

Not sounding good. I hope you take care to warn Armory users not to upgrade to latest Bitcoin Core 0.11.1.

Why?

Armory is not compatible yet with 0.11.1. Newest Bitcoin Core enforces LowS while Armory signs HighS. Users are reporting they are unable to send bitcoin using Armory after upgrading Bitcoin Core 0.11 to 0.11.1 and had to downgrade.

[bitpop]

Not sounding good. I hope you take care to warn Armory users not to upgrade to latest Bitcoin Core 0.11.1.

Why?

Armory is not compatible yet with 0.11.1. Newest Bitcoin Core enforces LowS while Armory signs HighS. Users are reporting they are unable to send bitcoin using Armory after upgrading Bitcoin Core 0.11 to 0.11.1 and had to downgrade.

Uh oh, I haven't tried sending lately

[goatpig]

Armory is not compatible yet with 0.11.1. Newest Bitcoin Core enforces LowS while Armory signs HighS. Users are reporting they are unable to send bitcoin using Armory after upgrading Bitcoin Core 0.11 to 0.11.1 and had to downgrade.

CircusPeanut merged the fix into 0.93 and etotheipi and I have reviewed the code. It should be going public soon enough.

[bitpop]

Armory is not compatible yet with 0.11.1. Newest Bitcoin Core enforces LowS while Armory signs HighS. Users are reporting they are unable to send bitcoin using Armory after upgrading Bitcoin Core 0.11 to 0.11.1 and had to downgrade.

CircusPeanut merged the fix into 0.93 and etotheipi and I have reviewed the code. It should be going public soon enough.

goatpig is king

[Liquid71]

armory is the only wallet i use

+1

Cute sentiment but I do not think you understand the type of resources required to build this type of software where individuals can generate and hold the private keys of their own wealth. Funding the building out of the core infrastructure the entire community uses has not been cheap and many people have made significant sacrifices of both time and money to get Bitcoin where it is today.

Of course businesses only survive by attracting paying customers, so the need of Armory to do so is clear.

I'm not sure you appreciate the way that Armory's value to potential customers changes as a result of being closed source.

I
Personally, I will never use a cold storage wallet that I don't compile myself from publicly-available source. A closed-source Bitcoin wallet is a spearphisher's wet dream.

You can easily use bitcoin core to create cold storage wallets. If you aren't using the wallets for anything than creating a cold storage wallet there are easier and better ways than Armory. The benefit of armory is if you spend from your air gapped cold storage you don't have to go through the entire process of creating a new cold storage wallet.

[cypherdoc]

0.93.3 update to deal with BIP 62 live:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1229596.0

[solitude]

I was made aware of Alan Reiner's plans for Armory on Septmeber the 8th this year

What are his plans exactly?

Is he going to start charging to use Armory or something?

[Carlton Banks]

I was made aware of Alan Reiner's plans for Armory on Septmeber the 8th this year

What are his plans exactly?

Is he going to start charging to use Armory or something?

I agreed then not to reveal what he told me

[TransAtlantic]

I was made aware of Alan Reiner's plans for Armory on Septmeber the 8th this year

What are his plans exactly?

Is he going to start charging to use Armory or something?

I agreed then not to reveal what he told me

Is there any official announcement about the state / future / plans of/for Armory right now?

I get from different posts that there is an unpleasant situation looming in, with people already declaring Armory "dead" (yet, Bitcoin has been declared dead many times - haven't even the CEO of Bitcoin said it on the news? )

What do we know at the moment? (apart that there is not much development)

[Carlton Banks]

Everything public is public, there is no official announcement on any of this, possibly (hopefully) because a final decision has still not been made. We all await it eagerly, myself included.

[TransAtlantic]

And I also want to add, because the developers deserves kudos, that I think that Armory is a piece of great software, and that it was much appreciated that it be made available to the community like that.  I personally think it is a very good (and important) support to the Bitcoin ecosystem by providing extremely secure & reliable ways to store coins - especially in this wild & dangerous "Far-West" world that is the young age of Bitcoin.
If Armory wouldn't have been there, many more people would have lost coins by leaving them on exchanges that got hacked or scammed their users.  (MtGox & cie, anyone?)

I know that words like "thanks" and "gratefulness" do not feed a mouth or pay the rent, but I still think they are important words to say.  It might feed something else.  

[common]

Would you guys be able to republish it so that we can make aaacommunity developed version based on what has already been written?

If it comes down to that I will release everything I have and maintain the software myself.

Your willingness to fork the project to keep it open source is reassuring. Unfortunately I have no choice but to research alternative clients because of the rumors of uncertainty being posted on the forum.

Cute sentiment but I do not think you understand the type of resources required to build this type of software where individuals can generate and hold the private keys of their own wealth. Funding the building out of the core infrastructure the entire community uses has not been cheap and many people have made significant sacrifices of both time and money to get Bitcoin where it is today.

Thank you for your generous financial contribution to Armory. The features found in Armory have made bitcoin a viable payment method.

On one hand, you appear to be indicating that Armory needs funding, while on the other hand, you're directly turning down a donation offer from a user and dismissing the idea of end user donations as "cute." There are Armory users who depend on Armory to process significant transactions. If Armory needs funding from the people who use it, why not ask for the money or at least accept money from people who are offering it?

When I visit the Armory home page, I see no indication that the project is in need of funds or any fund raising effort whatsoever. There is no visual aid indicating how far into the red Armory is. I don't see a donations page or button. I see the opposite of raising money, Armory is matching donations to other organizations like the EFF, giving bitcoin away. https://bitcoinarmory.com/donation-match-list/ I found a donations payment address in a discrete location on the bottom of the contacts page by searching the Armory home page with a search engine.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I do not see any indication of a donation area, button, or payment address within the Armory client itself either.

I would be happy to voluntarily donate to the project. However, discussions casting doubt on Armory's future as open source software are alarming because closed source cryptographic software is a nonstarter and Armory is a critical application for some of your end users. Armory devolving into a black box will motivate Armory users to look elsewhere.