The Bitcoin Foundation is TOXIC and must dissolve, plus a call to action

[Loozik]

Some devs are making money off of Bitcoin. Others can if they choose to.

I do not think they make as much as the Bitcoin system and Bitcoin community wants. Look at Bitcoin-Qt: its development is slow, it is hardly usable for non-programmers, wiki is outdated, there is no documentation for Bitcoin-Qt, etc.

I want TBF to solve their own issues.

There are no issues at TBF. TBF's management are just a few guys who use other guys' donated money for things the latter ones do not like. No issues, just good business. TBF business is just fine.

[Loozik]

Now look at someone like Ron Paul, who has worked within this corrupt system for his entire career.

Ron Paul joined the mafia in hope he could change the mafia into something good. He couldn't have succeeded. Of course one does not change / destroy mafia by joining it (except for success stories in movies).

I think Gavin and other TBF members are smarter than Ron Paul and have greater chances of succeeding. But still I estimate their chances at 0.00000000%, which is not worth the effort.

[bassclef]

Now look at someone like Ron Paul, who has worked within this corrupt system for his entire career.

Ron Paul joined the mafia in hope he could change the mafia into something good. He couldn't have succeeded. Of course one does not change / destroy mafia by joining it (except for success stories in movies).

I think Gavin and other TBF members are smarter than Ron Paul and have greater chances of succeeding. But still I estimate their chances at 0.00000000%, which is not worth the effort.

Ron Paul (per his own words) went into politics to spread ideas, not to win. And while Gavin and others may be smarter than Ron Paul, the real question is, are they more principled? I would guess not.

[Loozik]

And while Gavin and others may be smarter than Ron Paul, the real question is, are they more principled? I would guess not.

I think they are more principled. They are intellectually rigorous. At least Gavin is - I infer it from interviews he gives.

Anyway, I submitted the idea of ''Bitcoin project management website with rewards / salaries paid to the developers'' and I have not yet heard whether people like it or not.

Is this idea good, is it ugly, is it bad? Do you like it or not. Why not? Please speak.

[marcus_of_augustus]

Couple years ago it was "Don't talk to the CIA! They're Evil, and will Destroy Bitcoin!"

Now it is "Don't get involved in DC lobbying! That's Evil, and will Destroy Bitcoin!"

In a few more years, I bet it'll be "Don't go to the United Nations! They're Evil, and will Destroy Bitcoin!"

I'll quote myself from a related thread on google+

Walking along the beach this afternoon, enjoying the California sunshine, I think I realized where the fundamental disagreement lies.

Financial privacy / freedom is a larger issue than Bitcoin, and I personally think it would be better to fight that fight separately from Bitcoin.  Yes, Bitcoin is a great tool that will (I hope) bring us greater privacy/freedom. But I see advocating for Bitcoin as separate from advocating for financial privacy/freedom in general.

So: I think if you want financial privacy/freedom in general, then there is at least one US organization dedicated to that goal (http://freedomandprosperity.org/ -- we should get them to accept Bitcoin donations). I hate reinventing wheels, and am a big believer in focused organizations and projects as the way to get things done, so I think the Bitcoin Foundation should concentrate on making Bitcoin successful.

Gavin;

you said yourself that the Bitcoin Foundation is being modelled on the Linux Foundation. How many lawyers and lobbyists does the Linux Foundation employ? Just as a point of reference.

Also, you must realise that most of the members were of the impression when the foundation was set up (less than a year ago) that it was basically to fund dev work. Now it is talking about hiring a team of 6 lawyers and lobbyists to go to DC. Does this sound like dev work? It sounds more like a deceptive bait and switch ...

[Loozik]

I would think it be great for the bitcoin community if Gavin actually stop being the lead developer I feel he has gotten too powerful in a position that is suppose to be powerless.

I'll tell you what would be great from my perspective. Look at this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD4L7xDNCmA One of the devs (Mike) speaks there are certain capabilities built in the system that are ready to use, e.g. you can use some tool to avail funds when your kids when they turn 18 or something (not before).

Now, how to find such a functionality in Bitcoin-Qt, what command should be typped in Console? Well you guessed it, there is no documentation to Bitcoin-Qt and you can't find such a tool unless you are a programmer or a geek. Why the heck some developer could not be paid to make a documentation to this feature?

I do not think the problem is in Gavin leading the team. The problem is in the team not getting paid and therefore not getting the job done!

[Loozik]

Well now your talking about the blockchain scripting, which isn't turned on for good reason. We are still in beta, this stuff is still experimental, don't you want this stuff stable before adding another human factor in to something that isn't worth cents, that is worth over $100?

It was just an example to show that e.g. up-to-date documentation is needed - nobody will write it for free. I wasn't particularly interested in this feature, but looked for it for an hour in my Bitcoin-Qt and couldn't find

The problem with bitcoin is now people are getting greedy and if the developers don't want to do it for free, then that is their choice.

Nobody wants to work for free. I understand the devs pretty well. They are developing something beautiful that can potentially change the world. They should be rewarded, and its the system users who should pay, if the system users want the system to improve. I want to pay, but I do not want to donate to TBF (how can I be sure I am not donating to lobbyist's salary or the development of the feature I do not like and will not use?).

TBF has been failing to provide devs with good financial backup. Hence my idea of dumping TBF and starting a crowd financing website through which devs could be rewarded for their work. Shit, nobody even gave any comments to this proposal, except for John Smith.

[Severian]

Financial privacy / freedom is a larger issue than Bitcoin, and I personally think it would be better to fight that fight separately from Bitcoin. 

I have to disagree. Satoshi put privacy in his white paper:

10. Privacy

The traditional banking model achieves a level of privacy by limiting access to information to the
parties involved and the trusted third party. The necessity to announce all transactions publicly
precludes this method, but privacy can still be maintained by breaking the flow of information in
another place: by keeping public keys anonymous. The public can see that someone is sending
an amount to someone else, but without information linking the transaction to anyone. This is
similar to the level of information released by stock exchanges, where the time and size of
individual trades, the "tape", is made public, but without telling who the parties were.

As an additional firewall, a new key pair should be used for each transaction to keep them
from being linked to a common owner. Some linking is still unavoidable with multi-input
transactions, which necessarily reveal that their inputs were owned by the same owner. The risk
is that if the owner of a key is revealed, linking could reveal other transactions that belonged to
the same owner.

http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

The fight for privacy and the fight for Bitcoin were the same fight. IMO, the fight has been lost because too many people are looking at profit instead of privacy.

It was a good battle while it lasted.

[Loozik]

If you want to donate, then that your choice as I said before in a lot of other threads like that, use http://gittip.com the developer is trying to add bitcoins.

The problem with gittip is:

1. When I donate to a developer through gittip he receives BTC 1 and is still malnutritioned, while there should be a dedicated website where 1,000 people like me pay a developer BTC 1 each, making the developer 1,000 x happier.

2. When I donate through gittip I have no recourse over the developer. When I co-finance a feature through a dedicated project management website I can at least get back some funds from escrow if the developer's work is buggy.

Gittip is of no use if Bitcoin development's quality is to skyrocket.

[Loozik]

2) Ok now your talking about basically hiring a developer to create features just for you.

Me and 999 other users willing to co-fund a certain feature.

Remember Gavin controls what makes it into the client, while anyone can add or remove, Gavin is very choosey as he should be to add stupid features that only like one or two people want.

That's why I suggested control tools for him - look at this picture.

Gittip is for donations, you just want to hire a developer to make stuff for you. Two different things.

Yes, I do not want to make silly donations for non-jobs. I want to pay for sens-making features / fo jobs getting done. To speed development up.

[Loozik]

Uhmm, ok but bitcoin is in beta,

Bitcoin is in beta, but still businesses hire developers to do jobs in Bitcoin (BitPay and Jeff). Why couldn't users crowd-finance Bitcoin in its beta stage, if businesses can do it?

and Gavin controls what goes into the main release of bitcoin

Nothing would change, he would still control what goes into the main releases. the difference would be, his team would be paid by bitcoiners through crowd-financing website. Not only features could be financed this way, but also maintaining wiki.

so you want to hire a developer to add what you want in.

I want to hire a developer, but I do not have as much cash as MtGox have for hiring a developer. But 1,000 users through crowd-financing can pay more than MtGox.

Gavin knows the roadmap and he wants to hit certain points, having people like you biding on features that 99% of people don't want is something he doesn't want. So just hire a developer. Their but it be more expensive then 1 BTC your probably looking at 3-4BTCs.

Whether the feature is wanted and makes sense or not depends on the money that backs such a feature. Why do you think I or anybody else (separately or jointly) would be wasting BTC 1,000 or more of his hard earned money on a feature that does not add-value Bitcoin?

[Loozik]

Ok let me be blunt with you, your throwing numbers out like 1,000 that or 1,000 this.

Yeah, I am throwing numbers. Simply because I do not know the prices of developing features for Bitcoin. To my knowledge no developer ever publicly put a price on such a job. I have no idea whether a feature of allowing searching of addresses in Bitcoin-Qt costs BTC 10 or 100. Do you know?

And I also do not know how many people can be gathered by the idea of speeding up a development of a particular feature. How many people are there in an average mining pool? If there are 50 people in an average mining pool working together to achieve their goal, then I would assume that an average feature can be sponsored by also 50 persons (to speed up achieving a goal).

Second going back to the beta thing, isn't it more important for devs to be working on the stability of the bitcoin protocol

Maybe, you are the only guy who raises such question.

instead of creating stupid features that you want.

Firstly, you you have no idea what features I might want, if any. Why do you label them stupid 

So far I only publicly stated I can co-sponsor keeping wiki up-to-date and I can pay BTC 1 per year. If Bitcoin project management website is created maybe another 30 - 40 such persons can be found and use such tool to co-sponsor wiki as well. In this event, would BTC 30 - 40 be enough to hire an editor? I don't know - nobody put a price for it.

[Loozik]

It shouldn't be more than a couple hundred for most features.

Cause I can tell.


I am going back to coding, this is getting boring trying to explain how your idea, isn't going to work and will just foster bad code, and important things not getting done.

Thanks for your input.

[peewee]

Okay Guys,

Let's conclude this part of the thread:

Please don't take this personally but as constructive criticism.  It's obvious you're a coder and not in management yet because you've failed to acknowledge/identify a couple of key problems (should have been the first step)....just helpful advice when you're trying to move up the chain in the future.

In regards to your plan - I've read pages now and still have no solid Idea on how you propose to deal with the following problems:

1.  Implementation - Just because a lot of money goes behind an idea, doesn't mean that its; A - Good for Bitcoin, B - Accepted by a majority, C -A clear priority.   There's a reason the lobby and vote system exists in government and despite anarchist opinion, it's not to promote corruption... its to create an educated and well balanced debate that addresses all sides before a vote is cast on implementation.....how does your plan get to implementation in a fair and organized way?

2.  Government Intervention - How do you plan to protect Bitcoin from this looming threat.  I caution you that - "the we have more computing power than they do so what can they do" argument is painfully flawed.  When were talking about governments the size of the US, China, Russia, etc.... the paltry market cap of Bitcoin could easily be squashed by a multitude of options.   You need to acknowledge that this is a REALITY and then give us a plan that will address it.  Throwing money at developers does not satisfactorily re-enforce Bitcoin.  This war isn't going to be solely waged by computers over the internet in the near future....its going to face real push-back and sanctions from governments if we're not careful and it will affect us all.

[Loozik]

Please don't take this personally but as constructive criticism.

I don't mind criticism.

It's obvious you're a coder

No, I am not.

you've failed to acknowledge/identify a couple of key problems (should have been the first step)....just helpful advice when you're trying to move up the chain in the future

In regards to your plan - I've read pages now and still have no solid Idea on how you propose to deal with the following problems:

Okay, let's see these problems

1.  Implementation - Just because a lot of money goes behind an idea, doesn't mean that its; A - Good for Bitcoin, B - Accepted by a majority, C -A clear priority.

What does the above have to do with my idea? I see no relation.

There's a reason the lobby and vote system exists in government and despite anarchist opinion, it's not to promote corruption... its to create an educated and well balanced debate that addresses all sides before a vote is cast on implementation.....how does your plan get to implementation in a fair and organized way?

What does the above have to do with my idea? I see no relation.

2.  Government Intervention - How do you plan to protect Bitcoin from this looming threat.

By separating soon-to-be politically involved TBF from Bitcoin system's development and (Bitcoin system development would be financed by the system users and TBF would have no influence over technical aspects).

I caution you that - "the we have more computing power than they do so what can they do" argument is painfully flawed.  When were talking about governments the size of the US, China, Russia, etc.... the paltry market cap of Bitcoin could easily be squashed by a multitude of options.   You need to acknowledge that this is a REALITY and then give us a plan that will address it.  

What are you talking about?

Throwing money at developers does not satisfactorily re-enforce Bitcoin.

I think you missed my point. I do not want to throw money at developers. I want to co-finance, through crowdfunding mechanism, particular tasks (e.g. feature development). The last thing I want is to throw money at developers and require nothing from them.

This war isn't going to be solely waged by computers over the internet in the near future....its going to face real push-back and sanctions from governments if we're not careful and it will affect us all.

War?! What war? What are you talking about? Who is ''we''?

[senseless]

Bitcoin foundation votes are coming up for new board memberships.

If you want to alter the course of the foundation I would suggest you vote.

[Raoul Duke]

Bitcoin foundation votes are coming up for new board memberships.

If you want to alter the course of the foundation I would suggest you vote.

Does one have to be a politician/lobbyist just because he/she wishes the "government" to change its path?
Can't people just protest?

[Abdussamad]

TPTB have already lined up their candidates for the foundation election. Elizabeth Ploshay has been professionally lobbying for Israel in the US govt. She's been a member of AIPAC since her college days. The Israeli lobby in the US is responsible for so many deaths in the middle east. And now they are going to get their hands on bitcoin.

[luv2drnkbr]

I don't understand how you or anybody can be upset at the foundation for trying to integrate bitcoin in the the regulatory world.  The foundation is doing exactly what it's job is-- to promote bitcoin to the outside (regulation-laden) world.  I don't think it's necessary, and I haven't donated to the foundation, but they ARE doing what they're supposed to be doing.  That task includes hiring lobbyists, helping the gov create regulations for USA-based bitcoin businesses, etc.

As long as they keep paying Gavin to write code and as long as the code keeps the decentralization intact, I've got no beef with what they're trying to do.  I don't support it, but I also don't think it's necessarily bad.

The world is the way it is, and trying to place bitcoin into context with that world will bring more people in, which is a good thing.  Bitcoin is still beyond regulation, and if you don't like the foundation, you can simply IGNORE it.  As long as miners keep on putting valid tx's in blocks, Bitcoin will keep right on trucking.

This vitriol of the foundation is unwarranted.  They are doing exactly what they should be doing.  If you support that, donate to them, if you don't, don't.  It's really that simple.

[virtualmaster]

The Bitcoin Foundation should teach government agents how to mine bitcoins on unused government computers.