I can understand Gavin is upset, as he and his associates probably receive a lot of heat he thinks is unwarranted.
But get this:
Peter Vessenes is the CEO (?) of Coinlab. He's listed as on the Coinlab
exceutive team. He flew over to Japan, and negotiated with Mark and got him to give up his US and Canadian customer base, bringing it to US soil. At the same time he's the executive director of the Bitcoin Foundation, paying the paycheck of Gavin.
In an early interview, we could see Gavin burning Fiat:
I remember that was one of the earliest interviews in 2011 in a major media outlet. Now, he's gone corporate - his paycheck is paid by Vessenes (?), and the rebel attitude has been watered down to something that's über-politically correct. On the board of the Bitcoin Foundation is at least 3 major business owners.
Now, I appreciate the job Gavin and all associates do for bitcoins, but it would be naive to think that they should be immune to criticism. Some criticism will feel unjust, some will actually be unjust, and some will be valid - that's part of the business they're in. But why should the community blindly trust that the Foundation will work for the best interest of the Bitcoin community at large, and not having business interests at the forefront of their mind.
We know Vessenes is a serial entrepreneur, and should we really think he's doing all this work out of the godness of his heart ? Flying to Japan, having MtGox handing over the majority of the customer base, and then hiring the lead developer ?
What happens the day that business interests ask Gavin to introduce certain features to the code ? Will Gavin object and leve the Foundation, or will he oblige ? At what level will the foundation (which is now a private company ?) work with governments to regulate and monitor the usage of bitcoins ?
What stops Vessenes from selling out Coinlab to the biggest bidders in two years, after all he's a serial entrepreneur and afaik never stayed very long with a single company.
I'm sure that if the bitcoin protocol were adjusted to accomodate for a developers fee, to pay the lead and perhaps a couple other devs a year, most people would not object to that, and the devs would then be more independent.
I think it's a knee jerk reaction to bring up the hater flag and call them 'Anonymous cowards' that doesn't contribute. Sure, some people are probably haters that don't contribute much, but personally I do what I can for bitcoins, and I'm not sure if I like the development that I see these days. And certainly, I don't see the problem with asking questions.
We need transparency. True, a smaller group with effective individuals gets more things done than larger groups with a lot of talkers and few doers, but I think the community has a right to ask hard questions, and we shouldn't just sit around and trust the ones running the show to always do the right things. When decisions are made behind closed doors, and we don't know what's going on, then there will be questions.
I can understand Gavin, as his intentions are probably pure, that he get's annoyed with people not trusting him. In fact everyone that uses bitcoins puts their trust in Gavin and associates. I assume Vessenes has a computer, and that he has some free time that he could use to spend on this forum, interacting with the community and answering questions. After all, he's involved rather heavily in bitcoin, and he haven't exactly been very
active on the forums. Now, some people will probably come to his defense that he's busy propelling bitcoin forward and don't have time to talk to kids, trolls and haters on a lowlife internet forum. But get this, there are several highly educated, intelligent and people with all sorts of experience on this forum, people with ideas and questions.
By withdrawing himself from community discussion, he does not instill confidence. Apparently he's quite the nerd, fiddling with parameters for mining software and so on earlier on, and a large portion of the bitcoin user base is what you'd term as 'nerds', still at this stage. So if he wants to gain the trust of the community, then he should participate to a certain degree, not that he needs to live on the forums 24hrs a day, but checking in a couple of times every week, answering questions would not be a good idea. I'm aware that he's probably swamped and superbusy, but it wouldn't take that much time to chime in from time to time, even Gavin and Mark and the Bitinstant guys have time for that.
Mark Karpeles has been around in the community for a long time, and as such, he's gained the trust of the community to a large degree, even though he's received a lot of flak for the lack of scalability of the MtGox exchange in the latest months. But I trust him, and I think many others trust him as well.
Vessenes is the new guy around, and to be trusted, he needs to earn this trust, and why should he stop his 'serial entrepenurship'-mania at this point in time ? I wonder who will buy Coinlab when he goes tired of it. We never know who that's going to be, perhaps it will be one of the big law street firms with good political connections, and then you can be pretty sure there will be put leverage on Gavin and other devs to introduce certain 'features'.
The point is that even though I've admitted that the title of this thread, or the poll for that matter wasn't the best idea - it's also spurred a lot of good discussion - and it's the first time that Gavin has actually lost his cool. I can understand it from his point of view, if he views this as an unjust attack. But it shouldn't be taken personal, it's only a sign that people care about bitcoin, and when there's a new player in town, it's natural to be skeptical.
I don't like the word 'hater' as to me a 'hater' is somebody that's just negative to be negative, and really doesn't have anything constructive to say. I'm skeptical, but I'm not a hater.
But come on, the 'Trust us, leave all the important decisions to us - is the kind of attitude that made Satoshi create Bitcoin in the first place.
For example, the Bitcoin Foundation Forum should be open for reading by everybody. All expenditures should be out in the open, and all letters and official correspondence should be available for everyone to see, unless there's particular reasons not to do so. Whenever the Foundation is approached by governmental agencies, then this should be communicated to the community as well. In short - we want to see what you're doing.
Lastly I will just state that this is my opinion only, and if I used 'we' or the 'community', it's still just a way of phrasing it, and I'm not speaking for anyone else but myself, but believe it or not, I do have the benefit of the community at large as my genuine concern.
For instance, a lot of people will say that the MtGox centralization is a problem. And it's a problem because they have a dis-appropriate amount of all bitcoin trade, not because they cannot be trusted. If the foundation is asked about this, what should they do ? MtGox is funding them, how would they respond ? Yes, we will make MtGox smaller and help other exchanges out ? Do people see the conflicting interests here ? All business owners involved with the foundation, although they might love bitcoin and want to see it succeed, so do they want to have their businesses and their own wallets grow as well. Nothing wrong with that, but then you're not independent.
Thanks for listening.
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