[DVC]DevCoin - Official Thread - Moderated

[markm]

The concepts for the planned sites were secret because we did not want anyoen to run out and grab all the good domain names.

We have secured a number of the desired domains, possibly even all of them now though so I am not sure why there would be any continued need to keep them secret.

On the other hand with a forum of our own on the horizon maybe this single thread is not the best place, because on our own forum each of the sites could have a thread of its own for example.

So maybe we will be able soon to start saying oh well if you want deeper information about the project join its own forum...

Re the auctions I do not think we should be offering bounties for people to go out and buy closed source software.

I think in the past there has always been free open source software a person seeking a bounty could use, if the bounty was not about actually developing new free open source software.

For example the bounty for a devcoin based business, there are oodles of free open source packages one could use to set up a commerce site, or various other kinds of business. The bounty for an exchange there was Open Transactions and there are a couple of free open source web-based exchange scripts, albeit in horrible shape but still someone could have fixed one of those up and used it.

If we have already established that there is no free open source package for the kind of auction we want, I think our first step, if we need this thing that desperately, is to get a free open source package for doing such sites developed. Once a working package to do such sites exists then we would be in a position to do a bounty for actually setting up and running such a site as a site that accepts DeVCoins, or in a position to look into hiring people to run such a site on behalf of the DeVCoin project itself, or we could create a corporation that will run it and set it up as a non-profit corporation that donates whatever would have been profit (after salaries and expenses and employer contributions to whatever employers have to contribute to and so on and so on) to the Devcoin project or something.

But first I think a free open source package one could use to achieve the bounty should exist. Otherwise people who resort to proprietary packages will have an advantage, maybe in context an "unfair" advantage, over free open source people who also would have liked to go for the bounty.

Once we start offering bounties that basically amount to "go buy that there proprietary software and use it instead of free open source software" I think we are way off track, in fact maybe directly at cross-purposes to our mission.

So I would like to suggest too that we formalise this idea somehow: do not offer any bounties other than actual development of free open source software to do a thing for the doing of a thing that no existing free open source software already does / can do.

-MarkM-

[Unthinkingbit]

..
Awesome, although should we see if someone who's not already an admin is willing to step up to the role? There is the factotum title too, for the extra staff behind a project...I don't know...Unthinkingbit? What's the deal with this? Is this a feasible idea to prototype a devcoin-managed business?

This would be a big business for devcoin's current market capitalization. I'd guess it would take around 400 shares total. If most people want it then we'd do it.

..
For example the bounty for a devcoin based business, there are oodles of free open source packages one could use to set up a commerce site, or various other kinds of business. The bounty for an exchange there was Open Transactions and there are a couple of free open source web-based exchange scripts, albeit in horrible shape but still someone could have fixed one of those up and used it.

If we have already established that there is not free open source package for the kind of auction we want, I think our first step, if we need this thing that desperately, is to get a free open source package for doing such sites developed. Once a working package to do such sites exists then we would be in a position to do a bounty for actually setting up and running such a site as a site that accepts DeVCoins, or in a position to look into hiring people to run such a site on behalf of the DeVCoin project itself, or we could create a corporation that will run it and set it up as a non-profit corporation that donates whatever would have been profit (after salaries and expenses and emploter contributions to whatever employers have to contribute to and so on and so on) to the Devcoin project or something.

But first I think a free open source package one could use to achieve the bounty should exist. Otherwise people who resort to proprietary packages will have an advantage, maybe in context an "unfair" advantage, over free open source people who also would have liked to go for the bounty.

Once we start offering bounties that basically amount to "go buy that there proprietary software and use it instead of free open source software" I tink we are way off track, in fact maybe directly at cross-purposes to our mission.

So I would like to suggest too that we formalise this idea somehow: do not offer any bounties other than actual development of free open source software to do a thing for the doing of a thing that no existing free open source software already does / can do.

I agree that we should do this only if there is an open source package, or if we develop one. There are open source ecommerce packages, and open source lottos, it should be possible to make an auction package if there isn't one already. That alone would be a worthwhile bounty.

[markm]

Ok, so lets ask programmers how hard could/would it really be to hack up an existing auction site package to make the currency you bid in be called bids and to display alongside the amount of that currency that has been bid a resulting actual price at which the winning bidder would be able to buy the things being auctioned if no one else bids.

That would be a very minimal first pass "kludge", it would likely confuse people who already know how some other site like quibids or whatever does it, because this currency we call "bids" would not have to actually be a measure of the number of times people have placed bids; it would simply be how much of the site's internal currency/points have been bid on the item.

A step farther would be to limit that currency to integers, so they have to bid whole numbers of this strange stuff known confusingly by the name "bids".

Maybe we could go even farther, and only allow them to bid one so called "bid" at a time. That brings us even closer to the model existing sites use.

So far this sounds almost "trivial". An hour or few. (An hour followed by gosh knows how many hours chasing down all the "got ya"s  that I haven't yet thought of... )

Next though I foresee that some auction site systems, possibly including all the off the shelf free open source ones (I dunno as I have not ever looked at any of them) might use a model where people who place bids have not got a balance already in place on the site with which to bid.

Look at e-bay for example, [I think that] they let people place bids without having first placed into escrow aka deposited onto the e-bay site the amount of whatever that they are bidding.

(Maybe though it might only let you do that if it has your credit card? Or does it let you bid even if paypal does not know your credit card number nor can grab from your bank account nor has a sufficient balance in paypal already that can be held until the end of the auction to ensure you are able to pay if you do win the auction?)

Obviously since we want to sell "bids" up front, so that people cannot bid first then pay for that "bid" later, we need a system that makes people do their bidding only from existing balances they already have on the system.

If none of the existing free open source auction site systems feature such local to the site balances, then it seems to me we have run up against our first bounty: we first need a free open source auctions system that uses site-local balances.

That could be a good and useful mod or module to any free open source auctions system, so maybe before we even worry about hacking in the special handling that our special local currency known as "bids" will need we should secure/cause the existence of a free open source auctions system that uses local to the site balances.

Since rumour had it that there exists more than one free open source auction site package, maybe we could do our usual multiple form of bounty for this mod/module, maybe the number of free open source auction site systems out there should limit how multi we make the bounty.

That is, if for example there turn out to only be two such packages out there, then maybe instead of a six-step bounty where the first six people to do it get so many shares, we should limit it to a two step where the first to do it gets so many and the second to do it gets so many, so that if we are lucky maybe both people who do it will do it to a different one of the existing free open source auction site packages?

Then once at least one free open source auction site package that supports site-local user-balances exists we can go on to look at the matter of how to adapt such a package to make its site-local currency act the way we would like our proposed "currency known as bids" to act?

Next we will probably want users to be able to purchase the site-local currency by means of cryptocoins.

So the next mod/module we would likely want to see in place and working would be the ability to accept cryptocoins in return for the site-local currency. That is, the ability to sell the site-local currency for cryptocoins.

If there already exists a payment gateway for selling the site-local currency to the users, such as a module/page/scrypt that lets people use paypal or suchlike to buy it, then the easiest/quickest way to accept cryptocoins might be to use a similar type of service but one that happens to handle cryptocoins (possibly in addition to other forms of currency).

If not then we'd need to decide whether we want to make the thing depend upon such third party services or prefer to have it do its own accepting of cryptocoins, with all the potential cans of worms that could lead us to open...

...All this just to get us to the point where there exists a free open source auctions site that uses site-local balances and sells users its site-local currency.

Once that is in place, then hacking the site-local currency (aka site-local balances) to act the way we want "bids" to act should seem a relatively minor task.

(Then we would of course proceed onwards to now they can win auctions lets look at having them actually buy the things they won the right to buy, at the price they won the right to buy it at...)

-MarkM-

[sidhujag]

Ok, so lets ask programmers how hard could/would it really be to hack up an existing auction site package to make the currency you bid in be called bids and to display alongside the amount of that currency that has been bid a resulting actual price at which the winning bidder would be able to buy the things being auctioned if no one else bids.

That would be a very minimal first pass "kludge", it would likely confuse people who already know how some other site like quibids or whatever does it, because this currency we call "bids" would not have to actually be a measure of the number of times people have placed bids; it would simply be how much of the site's internal currency/points have been bid on the item.

A step farther would be to limit that currency to integers, so they have to bid whole numbers of this strange stuff known confusingly by the name "bids".

Maybe we could go even farther, and only allow them to bid one so called "bid" at a time. That brings us even closer to the model existing sites use.

So far this sounds almost "trivial". An hour or few. (An hour followed by gosh knows how many hours chasing down all the "got ya"s  that I haven't yet thought of... )

Next though I foresee that some auction site systems, possibly including all the off the shelf free open source ones (I dunno as I have not ever looked at any of them) might use a model where people who place bids have not got a balance already in place on the site with which to bid.

Look at e-bay for example, [I think that] they let people place bids without having first placed into escrow aka deposited onto the e-bay site the amount of whatever that they are bidding.

(Maybe though it might only let you do that if it has your credit card? Or does it let you bid even if paypal does not know your credit card number nor can grab from your bank account nor has a sufficient balance in paypal already that can be held until the end of the auction to ensure you are able to pay if you do win the auction?)

Obviously since we want to sell "bids" up front, so that people cannot bid first then pay for that "bid" later, we need a system that makes people do their bidding only from existing balances they already have on the system.

If none of the existing free open source auction site systems feature such local to the site balances, then it seems to me we have run up against our first bounty: we first need a free open source auctions system that uses site-local balances.

That could be a good and useful mod or module to any free open source auctions system, so maybe before we even worry about hacking in the special handling that our special local currency known as "bids" will need we should secure/cause the existence of a free open source auctions system that uses local to the site balances.

Since rumour had it that there exists more than one free open source auction site package, maybe we could do our usual multiple form of bounty for this mod/module, maybe the number of free open source auction site systems out there should limit how multi we make the bounty.

That is, if for example there turn out to only be two such packages out there, then maybe instead of a six-step bounty where the first six people to do it get so many shares, we should limit it to a two step where the first to do it gets so many and the second to do it gets so many, so that if we are lucky maybe both people who do it will do it to a different one of the existing free open source auction site packages?

Then once at least one free open source auction site package that supports site-local user-balances exists we can go on to look at the matter of how to adapt such a package to make its site-local currency act the way we would like our proposed "currency known as bids" to act?

Next we will probably want users to be able to purchase the site-local currency by means of cryptocoins.

So the next mod/module we would likely want to see in place and working would be the ability to accept cryptocoins in return for the site-local currency. That is, the ability to sell the site-local currency for cryptocoins.

If there already exists a payment gateway for selling the site-local currency to the users, such as a module/page/scrypt that lets people use paypal or suchlike to buy it, then the easiest/quickest way to accept cryptocoins might be to use a similar type of service but one that happens to handle cryptocoins (possibly in addition to other forms of currency).

If not then we'd need to decide whether we want to make the thing depend upon such third party services or prefer to have it do its own accepting of cryptocoins, with all the potential cans of worms that could lead us to open...

...All this just to get us to the point where there exists a free open source auctions site that uses site-local balances and sells users its site-local currency.

Once that is in place, then hacking the site-local currency (aka site-local balances) to act the way we want "bids" to act should seem a relatively minor task.

(Then we would of course proceed onwards to now they can win auctions lets look at having them actually buy the things they won the right to buy, at the price they won the right to buy it at...)

-MarkM-

Whats wrong with the templates I gave they do all this and more.. you even get the source minus licensing?

Think of it like a hosting plan but one time payments? after that we are free to make whatever changed we want.. we can post thesource but it would only work for our site which is ok since it is a business afterall.

You have to consider bidding, cancellations, maybe tax.. adding coinpayments..

I think showing value in fiat terms is fine to start out or maybe bitcoin.. something every user is familiar with to relate market value in that currency. Thats just to start anyway. Later of we let user decide local maybe and all prices are reflected in that coin.. just dangerous to do so with the volatility so thats why I said stick to showing usd for now but you can purchase bids for $0.60 equivelant in coins we accept and or fiat if we wanna go balls out

So we want to recreate the wheel for the purpose of turning it into fully open source?

That against the vision? I think the project is evolving rather than going off track.. you still have the open source stuff if we pay but you have competing businesses that look out for interest of devcoin and its shareholders... Do you think its hypocritical to do such a thing? Honestly asking.

Whats the purpose of not using a template you buy when noone can copy it anyway.. they wouldnt have the funding we do. So the incentive to do is minimal no? Its kind of an evolved form of dvc project that allows later funding for bigger open source projects by increSing market cap with profits..

[weisoq]

This would be a big business for devcoin's current market capitalization. I'd guess it would take around 400 shares total. If most people want it then we'd do it.

...

I agree that we should do this only if there is an open source package, or if we develop one. There are open source ecommerce packages, and open source lottos, it should be possible to make an auction package if there isn't one already. That alone would be a worthwhile bounty.

On auction site and other ideas, concepts such as these should be comprehensively planned out and at least ball-park costed before any bounty put forward. Example - 400 shares estimated at last round's estimate works out to $24k. I can't see how or why that can be suggested without a lot more justification.

In general, I think the bounty system and a means to better assign project steps need to be worked on before stuff like this is started. Ambition is good but proposals are getting into dreamworld territory when there's little to no prior market research or analysis done beforehand.

Progress generally works in steps and it makes sense to think about the progressive developments necessary to support the workings of turning ideas into implementations. Devcoin is a means of reward for working, so there's a conceptual and practical difference between a work or bounty exchange, and an auction exchange.

If something like the auction site is a means to build a revenue base, that's great, but then perhaps should be viewed and funded in a different way to concepts that are arguably more core to the devcoin project. For example, if it's private revenue then it doesn't need devcoin bounty funding because it will pay for itself (and if it won't then why do it?). If it's devcoin project revenue then what's going to happen to that revenue, in what currency, what systems in place to reinvest, reinvest in what? etc etc. It's all a loop and that loop needs thinking through. Also, why an auction? If people just want things to buy/sell that's called a shop. Does it need complicating via an auction? Not saying an auction's necessarily a bad idea, but it needs a lot more explaining and rationale for not just building a basic merchant outlet, for example.

And that's my view as a person not an admin.

[dalamar96]

Ok, so lets ask programmers how hard could/would it really be to hack up an existing auction site package to make the currency you bid in be called bids and to display alongside the amount of that currency that has been bid a resulting actual price at which the winning bidder would be able to buy the things being auctioned if no one else bids.

That would be a very minimal first pass "kludge", it would likely confuse people who already know how some other site like quibids or whatever does it, because this currency we call "bids" would not have to actually be a measure of the number of times people have placed bids; it would simply be how much of the site's internal currency/points have been bid on the item.

A step farther would be to limit that currency to integers, so they have to bid whole numbers of this strange stuff known confusingly by the name "bids".

Maybe we could go even farther, and only allow them to bid one so called "bid" at a time. That brings us even closer to the model existing sites use.

So far this sounds almost "trivial". An hour or few. (An hour followed by gosh knows how many hours chasing down all the "got ya"s  that I haven't yet thought of... )

Next though I foresee that some auction site systems, possibly including all the off the shelf free open source ones (I dunno as I have not ever looked at any of them) might use a model where people who place bids have not got a balance already in place on the site with which to bid.

Look at e-bay for example, [I think that] they let people place bids without having first placed into escrow aka deposited onto the e-bay site the amount of whatever that they are bidding.

(Maybe though it might only let you do that if it has your credit card? Or does it let you bid even if paypal does not know your credit card number nor can grab from your bank account nor has a sufficient balance in paypal already that can be held until the end of the auction to ensure you are able to pay if you do win the auction?)

Obviously since we want to sell "bids" up front, so that people cannot bid first then pay for that "bid" later, we need a system that makes people do their bidding only from existing balances they already have on the system.

If none of the existing free open source auction site systems feature such local to the site balances, then it seems to me we have run up against our first bounty: we first need a free open source auctions system that uses site-local balances.

That could be a good and useful mod or module to any free open source auctions system, so maybe before we even worry about hacking in the special handling that our special local currency known as "bids" will need we should secure/cause the existence of a free open source auctions system that uses local to the site balances.

Since rumour had it that there exists more than one free open source auction site package, maybe we could do our usual multiple form of bounty for this mod/module, maybe the number of free open source auction site systems out there should limit how multi we make the bounty.

That is, if for example there turn out to only be two such packages out there, then maybe instead of a six-step bounty where the first six people to do it get so many shares, we should limit it to a two step where the first to do it gets so many and the second to do it gets so many, so that if we are lucky maybe both people who do it will do it to a different one of the existing free open source auction site packages?

Then once at least one free open source auction site package that supports site-local user-balances exists we can go on to look at the matter of how to adapt such a package to make its site-local currency act the way we would like our proposed "currency known as bids" to act?

Next we will probably want users to be able to purchase the site-local currency by means of cryptocoins.

So the next mod/module we would likely want to see in place and working would be the ability to accept cryptocoins in return for the site-local currency. That is, the ability to sell the site-local currency for cryptocoins.

If there already exists a payment gateway for selling the site-local currency to the users, such as a module/page/scrypt that lets people use paypal or suchlike to buy it, then the easiest/quickest way to accept cryptocoins might be to use a similar type of service but one that happens to handle cryptocoins (possibly in addition to other forms of currency).

If not then we'd need to decide whether we want to make the thing depend upon such third party services or prefer to have it do its own accepting of cryptocoins, with all the potential cans of worms that could lead us to open...

...All this just to get us to the point where there exists a free open source auctions site that uses site-local balances and sells users its site-local currency.

Once that is in place, then hacking the site-local currency (aka site-local balances) to act the way we want "bids" to act should seem a relatively minor task.

(Then we would of course proceed onwards to now they can win auctions lets look at having them actually buy the things they won the right to buy, at the price they won the right to buy it at...)

-MarkM-

I have already stated my opinion on this, the ideas that have come forward so far and the unwillingness to actually think it through and everyone wanting to JUMP IN and do it. Not a good idea. I'm out of this one. As far as the project manager position, I have no trouble doing that if we have a full project to work on, and people actually work the project. But, so far I can't see that happening in this forum. Maybe the new one where we can get a little more organized, but it is too difficult in a single thread. Auction Site, at least the way it is being discussed now, I am not going to be part of.

[dalamar96]

This would be a big business for devcoin's current market capitalization. I'd guess it would take around 400 shares total. If most people want it then we'd do it.

...

I agree that we should do this only if there is an open source package, or if we develop one. There are open source ecommerce packages, and open source lottos, it should be possible to make an auction package if there isn't one already. That alone would be a worthwhile bounty.

On auction site and other ideas, concepts such as these should be comprehensively planned out and at least ball-park costed before any bounty put forward. Example - 400 shares estimated at last round's estimate works out to $24k. I can't see how or why that can be suggested without a lot more justification.

In general, I think the bounty system and a means to better assign project steps need to be worked on before stuff like this is started. Ambition is good but proposals are getting into dreamworld territory when there's little to no prior market research or analysis done beforehand.

Progress generally works in steps and it makes sense to think about the progressive developments necessary to support the workings of turning ideas into implementations. Devcoin is a means of reward for working, so there's a conceptual and practical difference between a work or bounty exchange, and an auction exchange.

If something like the auction site is a means to build a revenue base, that's great, but then perhaps should be viewed and funded in a different way to concepts that are arguably more core to the devcoin project. For example, if it's private revenue then it doesn't need devcoin bounty funding because it will pay for itself (and if it won't then why do it?). If it's devcoin project revenue then what's going to happen to that revenue, in what currency, what systems in place to reinvest, reinvest in what? etc etc. It's all a loop and that loop needs thinking through. Also, why an auction? If people just want things to buy/sell that's called a shop. Does it need complicating via an auction? Not saying an auction's necessarily a bad idea, but it needs a lot more explaining and rationale for not just building a basic merchant outlet, for example.

And that's my view as a person not an admin.

Agreed! Now a bounty control / tracker and project management site for DevCoin projects. That, I can stand behind

[tenthirtyone]

I'm definitely not reading those walls of text. There's almost nothing that can't be summed up in three lines or less.

I saw someone ask about changing an auction site/app w/r/t the currency you take. I wouldn't do that, you would want to add functionality to what exists. So just add a devcoin payment option.

In short, what I think most of you folks are talking about a big project that isn't. Just bounty out a devcoin payment mod for already existing platforms. Much, much simpler and affects more people

[sidhujag]

This would be a big business for devcoin's current market capitalization. I'd guess it would take around 400 shares total. If most people want it then we'd do it.

...

I agree that we should do this only if there is an open source package, or if we develop one. There are open source ecommerce packages, and open source lottos, it should be possible to make an auction package if there isn't one already. That alone would be a worthwhile bounty.

On auction site and other ideas, concepts such as these should be comprehensively planned out and at least ball-park costed before any bounty put forward. Example - 400 shares estimated at last round's estimate works out to $24k. I can't see how or why that can be suggested without a lot more justification.

In general, I think the bounty system and a means to better assign project steps need to be worked on before stuff like this is started. Ambition is good but proposals are getting into dreamworld territory when there's little to no prior market research or analysis done beforehand.

Progress generally works in steps and it makes sense to think about the progressive developments necessary to support the workings of turning ideas into implementations. Devcoin is a means of reward for working, so there's a conceptual and practical difference between a work or bounty exchange, and an auction exchange.

If something like the auction site is a means to build a revenue base, that's great, but then perhaps should be viewed and funded in a different way to concepts that are arguably more core to the devcoin project. For example, if it's private revenue then it doesn't need devcoin bounty funding because it will pay for itself (and if it won't then why do it?). If it's devcoin project revenue then what's going to happen to that revenue, in what currency, what systems in place to reinvest, reinvest in what? etc etc. It's all a loop and that loop needs thinking through. Also, why an auction? If people just want things to buy/sell that's called a shop. Does it need complicating via an auction? Not saying an auction's necessarily a bad idea, but it needs a lot more explaining and rationale for not just building a basic merchant outlet, for example.

And that's my view as a person not an admin.

Of course it wouldnt be started without designing in detail. Now I said this already but the reason its works is because its devcoin funded and all profits back to it. We have a community to support it rather than individuals. So ask yourself this then: Why are we throwing $24k a month at devtome per month?

Those people that say if you dont fund it yourself its not worth it need to ask themselves the same thing about existing projects.. maybe now it will help realize the position we are in. Im trying to give devtome competition by doing one that is more aligned with a business structure instead of open source creativity.. its two different concepts and thats why I said we are evolving not being side tracked.

I will still put together a doc that hashes out alot of the questions you and others have and we can all work on it together. Then with the expertise here we can judge if we should do it or keep looking.

[sidhujag]

I'm definitely not reading those walls of text. There's almost nothing that can't be summed up in three lines or less.

I saw someone ask about changing an auction site/app w/r/t the currency you take. I wouldn't do that, you would want to add functionality to what exists. So just add a devcoin payment option.

In short, what I think most of you folks are talking about a big project that isn't. Just bounty out a devcoin payment mod for already existing platforms. Much, much simpler and affects more people

Agreed I think the initial technical sprint would be easy just mindless work like adding coinpayments and theme and testing on a demo repeat with stuff changed.

The harder part is marketing and setting up a team with clear goals to do jobs for the thing and seeing it followthrough. If we start from scratch (not sure why) then yes we would want some sort of project management as multiple people would probably be developing all that code graphics etc.

[tenthirtyone]

The harder part is marketing and setting up a team with clear goals to do jobs for the thing and seeing it followthrough. If we start from scratch (not sure why) then yes we would want some sort of project management as multiple people would probably be developing all that code graphics etc.

Interesting. I would have said the marketing would be the mindless part. I see zero reason for a team, though. Especially just a marketing team.

"Give tribal leaders free stuff. Followers pay to be like tribal leader."

That said... why not just give devcoins to important twitter people and have them source projects however they want? Blam. Marketing = done.

[psybits]

I'm definitely not reading those walls of text. There's almost nothing that can't be summed up in three lines or less.

I saw someone ask about changing an auction site/app w/r/t the currency you take. I wouldn't do that, you would want to add functionality to what exists. So just add a devcoin payment option.

In short, what I think most of you folks are talking about a big project that isn't. Just bounty out a devcoin payment mod for already existing platforms. Much, much simpler and affects more people

I agree with this - keep it simple, streamlined and cost effective.

I wonder if we could create a Bitcoin version, and use the Bitcoin profits to buy DVC, to help drive the DVC price higher.

If we could set up a number of these "systems" to support the DVC ecosystem and exchange rate that would be awesome.

I've got a few ideas but I need some spare time to implement them!

[sidhujag]

I'm definitely not reading those walls of text. There's almost nothing that can't be summed up in three lines or less.

I saw someone ask about changing an auction site/app w/r/t the currency you take. I wouldn't do that, you would want to add functionality to what exists. So just add a devcoin payment option.

In short, what I think most of you folks are talking about a big project that isn't. Just bounty out a devcoin payment mod for already existing platforms. Much, much simpler and affects more people

I agree with this - keep it simple, streamlined and cost effective.

I wonder if we could create a Bitcoin version, and use the Bitcoin profits to buy DVC, to help drive the DVC price higher.

If we could set up a number of these "systems" to support the DVC ecosystem and exchange rate that would be awesome.

I've got a few ideas but I need some spare time to implement them!

Well bitcoin would definitely be accepted, but so would Devcoin... we would buy devcoin with any other coins to bid up the market anyway, and the devcoins we have would be used to fund shares or other projects that need funding... ie: pay for bounties for future projects instead of using shares, or pay devtome via profits instead of shares, opening up more shares for something else, like funding these type of businesses?

In the end whatever we accept, we would convert back to devcoins anyway to do what you are saying, and another reason for doing this is for another way to spend devcoins not only other coins, so those that get dvc aren't dumping at market all the time.

[georgem]

I was thinking about the possibilities of devcoin and what direction it should take in the future, and there was one thing I wondered:

If we want to pay creators/developers for open source stuff they create... shouldn't we first have some kind of open bulletin board where people can request useful stuff of all kinds?

If we want to create an open market where ideas and developers meet, we should not forget the need for a platform where people can express their wishes.

I understand that at this point most bounties and wishes are revolving arount the basic management, administration and financialization of the devcoin/devtome platforms, but shouldn't we early enough implement a simple yet partitioned platform for idea exchanges?

[markm]

The idea that we can compete with venture-capital financed startups / businesses on the basis of our larger amount of funding seems to me highly dubious.

Most venture capital comes in chunks much much larger than a mere $24k. Our puny $24k per month or whatever of financing would be trivial compared to real startups as they would tend to be financed in millions rather than thousands.

Heck even Mastercoin, a rather informal startup whipped up on a forum, the funding was in the millions of dollars range.

So I think this idea that our having shares to throw at things means real businesses won't be able to compete with us is silly/unrealistic.

There must be something we could do using free open source stuff that could make a viable business.

This whole focus on what can we find that is not free open source and lets base everything on that seems a bad thing. What proprietary things will be be spending our shares on next? A MacDonalds franchise maybe when our market cap is high enough? At least with a MacDonalds franchise we would be in co-operation with the whole MacDonalds system instead of like this auction idea seems to amount to saying like oh gosh MacDonalds is a sure fire business, lets make a DevDonalds... and not even thinking lets make the whole thing, franchise and all, its more like lets create one little restaurant on the MacDonalds model and call it DevDonalds and try to compete.

-MarkM-

[tenthirtyone]

Well bitcoin would definitely be accepted, but so would Devcoin... we would buy devcoin with any other coins to bid up the market anyway, and the devcoins we have would be used to fund shares or other projects that need funding... ie: pay for bounties for future projects instead of using shares, or pay devtome via profits instead of shares, opening up more shares for something else, like funding these type of businesses?

In the end whatever we accept, we would convert back to devcoins anyway to do what you are saying, and another reason for doing this is for another way to spend devcoins not only other coins, so those that get dvc aren't dumping at market all the time.

This is a good example.

So you have a business that accepts bitcoin/devcoin. But you really don't care about bitcoin, so it's superfluous to the definition because really you say in the next sentence that any other coins are just going to be used to buy devcoin. So what you really have is an invention that sells a product/service and turns those profits in to cryptocurrency buys/bids/funding projects/bounties/pay devtome writers.

That's not a business. You're trying to create an economic system. In fact, I've read these threads and I think I am unlearning what ya'll want to accomplish.

http://tamingdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/tree-swing-project-management-large.png

[markm]

It kind of seems like where this is going is if we get very very very lucky and the managers / founders are extremely dedicated and talented/skilled we might end up having yet another quibids type auction site in existence from which we can then keep trying to pry some kind of something that would benefit DeVCoin.

If accepting DeVCoin would make any sense to such sites as a business proposition then creating yet another such site seems redundant, since it would make sense for such sites to support DeVCoin so if they are not themselves idiots - which presumably they are not if the are already succeeding even without DeVCoins having any involvement - they will do the sensible thing and accept DeVCoins.

Meanwhile I foresee us basically ending up having put someone into a business of their own (since there is no legal entity constituting the DeVCoin project that could own shares of the business) who will simply find, like all the other such auction sites, that it makes no sense to bother with DeVCoins.

So bottom line either it makes sense to support DeVCoins in which case we can expect more and more such sites to start accepting them, or it does not so there will be more and more business-case for such sites to free up manpower and capital and general work and pain and stress by saying sorry guys I tried but Quibids was right DeVCoins are not ready for use in this field, gosh gee wilikers ah well no one can say we didn't prematurely and without proper forethought try, meanwhile goodbye and thanks for all the customers.

I doubt we will even get that lucky though. More likely we will simply find the founder was not really qualified to found such a startup.

On the other hand if we create free open source software for doing such sites, maybe hundreds or thousands of people will try to make a go of such sites and maybe - not likely but maybe - among them will turn out to be someone who will somehow make a go of it, and at that point we could approach them hoping they are more sympathetic to the idea of accepting DeVCoins (since DeVCoins made available to them the free open source software that made their business possible) than quibids or other sites using similar models but possibly not using free open source software to do it, let alone free open souce software that is only free and open source thanks to the DeVCoin project.

So we should end up with many many more people trying to make it work thus more chance of one among them being that amazing startup founder that actually makes it really work.

-MarkM-

[weisoq]

Of course it wouldnt be started without designing in detail. Now I said this already but the reason its works is because its devcoin funded and all profits back to it. We have a community to support it rather than individuals. So ask yourself this then: Why are we throwing $24k a month at devtome per month?

Those people that say if you dont fund it yourself its not worth it need to ask themselves the same thing about existing projects.. maybe now it will help realize the position we are in. Im trying to give devtome competition by doing one that is more aligned with a business structure instead of open source creativity.. its two different concepts and thats why I said we are evolving not being side tracked.

I will still put together a doc that hashes out alot of the questions you and others have and we can all work on it together. Then with the expertise here we can judge if we should do it or keep looking.

I was responding more to talk of bounty before designing in detail. Devtome etc, you know my view already but that doesn't negate the point that any new value proposition needs to generate value - for devcoin. That value may well be in marketing, trade flow rather than cash but propositions still need justifying, and certainly as a choice vs another option. I'm all for creating devcoin markets and have offered a startup bounty for one.

I'm not saying it's a good/bad idea, just at this point (1) I don't get the basic a-b-c devcoin value business model (2) Without understanding that, the mechanics, specific options are irrelevant. That might just be me - there are too many pages of discussion to follow.

[ThinkI]

I was thinking about the possibilities of devcoin and what direction it should take in the future, and there was one thing I wondered:

If we want to pay creators/developers for open source stuff they create... shouldn't we first have some kind of open bulletin board where people can request useful stuff of all kinds?

If we want to create an open market where ideas and developers meet, we should not forget the need for a platform where people can express their wishes.

I understand that at this point most bounties and wishes are revolving arount the basic management, administration and financialization of the devcoin/devtome platforms, but shouldn't we early enough implement a simple yet partitioned platform for idea exchanges?

Good idea. How about a section of the new forum?

ThinkI

[markm]

Since part of the sentiment in this whole auctions thing seems to be some idea that since we are a community and someone in our community really really wants an auction site we the community should somehow make it possible for him to have one, how about this idea:

A DeVCoin Credit Union.

Lets incorporate a credit union whose native currency is DeVCoin.

Those people who choose to join the union - which costs money, which money becomes capital the union can use to do loans - get to decide amongst themselves, using a set of bylaws and probably Roberts Rules of Order or some similar standard operating procedure, who among them deserves a loan of how much.

This would also mean there is a legal entity that can own shares of legal businesses, so it could do financing that includes retaining equity in businesses that it helps to start up.

In order to attract capital for loaning, it could offer deposit accounts that pay interest, that interest being less than the interest it charges on loans.

Then any DeVCoin holders who believe that the members of the union are making wise choices about what/who to loan to aka what/who to invest in can deposit DeVCoins into such interest-paying accounts.

It will be interesting to measure the confidence DeVCoin holders have in the decision making skills of the members of the union by seeing how much they choose to deposit in such accounts.

-MarkM-