A couple of points.
First - this is a first public release piece of beta software; who knows what sort of optimizations will be created now that there is a baseline to work from. The first gen primecoin miner, for instance, while servicable, proved to have abysmal performance - it was only after other developers examined the code that Sonny wrote that they could introduce optimazations. Same could easily be the case here - it's far too early to tell.
Second - from the get-go, there were real questions whether primecoins proof of work would get any benefit from GPU's at all. There was only one way to find out for certain, have someone set up to actually develop one. Had mtrlt not stepped up to the plate, the community would have continued to yearn and clamor for one, even if every mathematician on this forum said it couldn't be done.
He offered zero assurance of the outcome, just offering up his own hopes and suspicions of what the end result could be, and sought out community support to do so. And he did deliver - everyone appears to now be playing with his new software; it's a beta - it's not optimized, and not tested on anything but the hardware he has access to. How can that be a scam?
He did ask for donations and promised early access to the software in exchange. That was to pay for his development time. The flip side could have been, if he had a private GPU farm, that he simply went and developed the software and didn't even whisper a word of its existence. He opted to go the route that would have supported the community had it panned out, which is, frankly, commendable.
Many peoples complaints seem preposterous... Donations were given to fund his development time and only that. He didn't promise to provide 100x or even 10x performance increases, only to work on creating a miner that would run on GPU's. Just because you want to consider your donation a sale doesn't make it so. Lots of organizations accept donations and give back gifts of goods or services as thanks to their donators.
"Hi - i donated to you, but now that i don't have GPU's anymore, I want my donation back".
"Because a different person that donated for early access released the code for everyone else to use, I want my donation back"
"I donated, but because the software doesn't perform according to my hopes, I would like to rescind that donation".
No - you can't rewrite the terms after you've given money and he's delivered his product. If you wanted strings attached and assurances, you should have worked that out with him prior to giving him money, at which point he likely would have demanded quite a bit more compensation because of those strings.
Are you serious?
"A couple of points.
First - this is a first public release piece of beta software; who knows what sort of optimizations the chickens will create now that there is a baseline to work from. The first gen primecoin miner, for instance, while servicable, proved to have abysmal performance - it was only after other developers examined the code that Sonny wrote that they could introduce optimazations. Same could easily be the case here - it's far too early to tell.
Second - from the get-go, there were real questions whether primecoin mining proof of chickens would get any benefit from chickens at all. There was only one way to find out for certain, have someone set up to actually develop a chicken miner. Had 2Kool4Skewl not stepped up to the plate, the community would have continued to yearn and clamor for primecoin chicken miners, even if every mathematician on this forum said it couldn't be done.
2Kool4Skewl offered zero assurance of the outcome, just offering up his own hopes and suspicions of what the end result could be, and sought out community support to do so. And he did deliver - everyone appears to now be playing with his new software; it's a beta - it's not optimized, and not tested on anything but the hardware he has access to. How can that be a scam?"
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=286887.0BAWK BAWK! BAWK BAWK BAWK!!!!
