There is a lot of noise on this thread, and I want to make sure everyone knows that the Devs of Karmacoin (the op, etc) have absolutely nothing to do with Karmashares LLC. The reason it is important to note this is Karmashares has a huge legal liability as described below, and the Devs ARE NOT responsible for any money lost by people who invest in Karmashares. The Devs do not endorse investment and in fact strongly warn against it. Here is the core issue regarding what can happen
1) Kosmost allows people to purchase a percentage of the Karmashares LLC entity with a promise that they will get paid a portion of profits the company makes. These people are then Owners.
2) If Karmashares LLC is successful, and Kosmost sells the company, there is nothing that says what Owners will get in a company sale (asset sale or stock sale). Kosmost could technically pocket the entire amount received given that he is the sole legal owner as defined in his LLC documents. The Owners may not receive anything. We, the Devs, do not want the Owners to look towards us at that point as we have nothing to do with this for-profit venture
3) If Karmashares LLC makes money, there is nothing that would stop Kosmost, as the sole CEO and legal owner, from giving himself a quarterly bonus right before the profits are to be shared. The bonus would spend all of the profits so that there would be nothing left to distribute. Owners again would look to someone to sue, and we want to make sure they know the Devs are not in any way responsible or associated.
4) If someone else sues Karmashares LLC, anyone designated an Owner (assuming the paperwork is proper for their stock certificates) would be liable for damages. This means the person who puts in 1000 Karmacoin would be liable for paying someone who wins a lawsuit against Karmashares LLC. The Devs again are not associated with this entity and are not responsible.
Yes, the LLC is a legal entity and for some reason Kosmost believes showing where the LLC is incorporated mitigates these major problems. Anyone can create an LLC on LegalZoom in about 20 minutes. In addition, a promise of transparency for the financials of Karmashares LLC still does nothing to fix these major issues.
ok boys and girls enough of the petty squabbling.
KarmaCoin is an open source project based on other open source technologies so there is no chance of intellectual property infringement because you simply cannot patent an invention that is based on open source software and open standards.
KarmaCoin like bitcoin IS and should always be free for anyone to use/adapt and build economies around. anyone who threatens to sue people for using any KarmaCoin IP is doing far more harm to the community than good. Can you imagine if a rogue Bitcoin company tried to sue everyone else who was using the name Bitcoin on their website? I can and it wouldn't look pretty because the entire community would boycott them into oblivion.
Yes KarmaShares LLC is a separate legal entity to the KarmaCoin project and so by incorporating, they open themselves up to any and all legal and regulatory hiccups and hurdles that any crypto-coin based company would have to face. This of course is their choice and the choice of anyone who chooses to invest with them and I wish them all the best with their endeavors. As is usually the case with any startup company the majority of them fail but the handful that succeed reap huge rewards for those early seed round investors. So the recommended wisdom is that nobody should invest more than they are willing to lose.
Nobody can deny that the Karmashares team has done more to lift the value of KarmaCoin than anyone else and they should be commended for doing most of the hard lifting. So please lets all take a chill pill and watch this coin move forward without being bogged down in political BS..
KarmaGood if you want to do something useful the please recompile the client with the updated OpenSSL to fix the heartbleed vulnerabilities.
unless I missed it (and its possible since I haven't been reading everything) this issue doesn't seem to have been addressed and yet it is of such concern to many of the other cryptocoins that most of them have released updates.
Peace and Karma to all and lets get on with the show....
PS.. as an FYI here is the license agreement that covers KarmaCoin via Bitcoin
Karmacoin is a free open source peer-to-peer electronic cash system that is completely decentralized, without the need for a central server or trusted parties. Users hold the crypto keys to their own money and transact directly with each other, with the help of a P2P network to check for double-spending.
The MIT License (MIT)
[OSI Approved License]
The MIT License (MIT)
Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.
