Re funding for Core development:
The major substance of your post proposes what, in substance, would be an endowment. It is a good idea. However, it would require much more sophistication (and accordingly, higher administrative overhead). I had been thinking more simply: Raise money, spend it. I will think about this further. I do not foresee immediate action on it, anyway. Besides any other questions, jumping into such a project in a bear market with no advance planning is not a very good approach; I’m not the one saying so.
Yeah, we might have been talking past each other a wee bit, and I have spent some time grappling with some of my own considerations about how to set up such a fund, and I was thinking about starting a thread on the topic - or alternatively to post in
my already existing thread.. but it might well be a topic that would be better suited for its own thread.
I was initially considering setting up the thread with a hypothesis of having a fund that would be initially seeded with 100 BTC, so the ideas would relate to my ideas about how much can be used from the funds on a regular basis to support the administration of the funds and also the sending out of funds to target projects. Of course there might be some flexibility in the amount of funds that would be in the seed round and if the fund might be able to able to receive additional funds from private sources or .. but the original assumption is that the fund is established by a private donor or a closed group that already grants full plenary authority to the fund administrator whether hypothetically that administrator would be me or whether it could (or should) be contracted out.
My initial thoughts about any extra funds that would be accepted would involve NDAs and even legal disclaimers and granting full discretion to the fund administrator regarding the distribution of donations, so of course, when we get into those kinds of possible receipt of outside funds, it is probably better to establish a track record and a set of clear distribution standards, criteria (and practices) first, as we already referred to some of these ideas. I have been thinking about variations of this for more than 2 years, so it is not like I have really gotten into the nitty gritty details of working towards carrying it out.
You have some interesting ideas, here and subsequently.
As you understand, if I merely wanted to talk hypothetically, I could chit-chat as much as I wanted in public; but then, there would be no point. I am taking this idea seriously—perhaps not for immediate implementation, but maybe to consider for a mid- to long-term goal. I appreciate this discussion. I read this post carefully.
[...] I thought that square had one developer who was ONLY a pseudonym..
I don’t know. Maybe, but it sounds doubtful to me. I have had some negative experience attempting to apply for grants anonymously from legally constituted corporate entities (whether for- or nonprofit)—not in Core, not even in Bitcoinland, but I would anticipate similar issues. I would be pleased to be wrong about that. Nowadays, it’s gotten so bad that with some exceptions, it seems that even most whitehat security bug bounties cannot be claimed without a full KYC doxing (LOL!).
[...] and surely some of the discussions of the details of how to set them up might be less valuable to carryout in a public thread or even through private messages but instead through more secure communication channels that hopefully are sufficiently comfortable (and secure) for everyone including funding sources and funded persons/pseudonyms...
True.
I will keep thinking about this.
On another note:
I know that there are some members who really have personal issues with me, and sometimes they will harbor those resentments for a long time, even for years, and then come out with a bunch of anger posts... hahahaha it is kind of funny how some folks can hate certain peeps on the interwebs so much.
With your way of seeing things, on the flipside, you can never have some of the positive life experiences that I have (very rarely) had in cypherspace. If you are too detached, you don’t much care either way—you can never make much of a deep connection with anyone. I am not only saying this now: I have had that thought about you before, years ago. It hit me when you declared somewhere, with a distinctly absolutist attitude, that “nobody gives a shit about you on the Internet” (here paraphrasing from recollection). Well, it is true in the overwhelming majority of cases. But with your outlook, you will miss the one-in-a-million outliers.
If someone were to offer me a billion dollars
right now to give up some of those positive life experiences, I would tell him to take his money straight to hell. That is not hyperbole. Some things are priceless.
On the negative side, I dislike permitting those who are beneath me drain my time and energy on nonsense. Whether IRL or online, I oughtn’t trouble myself too much to swat a troublesome fly, if it is inconvenient. Most of all, I must mind the proverb about wrestling with a pig. It is best to take the high road, to focus on important things, to comport oneself with poise and professionalism. But I never forgive, if someone seriously crosses me—never forgive, never forget. Despicable characters tend eventually to lay out enough proverbial rope to hang themselves, anyway.
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