.

[augustocroppo]

So someone donated to the forums a few years back at $10/XBT and let's say the forum spent that XBT on hosting or some other minor things.

Irrelevant, at that point the advertisement revenue was already covering that.

So by your logic where will these refunds come from now; out of the current donations, theymos' pocket, or where from exactly?

The refunds will come from the unspent funds.

Is every later donator supposed to basically subsidize these refunds and give a profit to earlier donators?

No. Donations are not an investment fund. No one donated expecting to withdraw that later. Everyone donated to cover the necessary expenses to improve the forum. However the forum was not improved and the funds were not spent. So it is quite reasonable reimburse the funds collected and start a new campaign from the scratch, with a clear and open plan to determine how the funds will be used.

[augustocroppo]

An Idea ... not sure if its a good one but an idea nevertheless.

perhaps any spare money leftover should be donated to a charity. EFF ? used as bounties for software development the community see as appropriate, or maybe all forum users that registered before a certain date could be given free lifetime membership to the bitcoin foundation as way of thanks for the contribution to the forum over the years.

just a suggestion 

That still do not achieve the cause. The implied agreement was a better forum, which not just include a new software, but improvement of the forum internal organization as well. That will not happen if the unspent funds are donated to a third party.

[User705]

No. Donations are not an investment fund. No one donated expecting to withdraw that later. Everyone donated to cover the necessary expenses to improve the forum. However the forum was not improved and the funds were not spent. So it is quite reasonable reimburse the funds collected and start a new campaign from the scratch, with a clear and open plan to determine how the funds will be used.

Are the tags sale able?  I'm sure you'd get plenty interested buyers.

[User705]

Donator / VIP tags

[ledmaniak]

Just out of curiosity all of you who want a refund of your donations are you expecting straight XBT refund or fiat equivalent and why?  Also why did you donate at the time if those questions weren't answered?

Is every later donator supposed to basically subsidize these refunds and give a profit to earlier donators?

That would be a ponzi.

Isn't there am (open) financial overview made every year?

[lunarboy]

An Idea ... not sure if its a good one but an idea nevertheless.

perhaps any spare money leftover should be donated to a charity. EFF ? used as bounties for software development the community see as appropriate, or maybe all forum users that registered before a certain date could be given free lifetime membership to the bitcoin foundation as way of thanks for the contribution to the forum over the years.

just a suggestion 

That still do not achieve the cause. The implied agreement was a better forum, which not just include a new software, but improvement of the forum internal organization as well. That will not happen if the unspent funds are donated to a third party.

Yeah I get that, my point was for the leftover funds, obviously new forum comes first, but we could get a gold plated, diamond encrusted, teleport enabled, super forum for $350 000. It would be crazy to spend that much. There is clearly going to be funds over and above requirement.

[SaltySpitoon]

Donator / VIP tags

You can still donate 10/50 BTC for Donator/VIP status. It isn't really emphasized anymore though because the forums doesn't really need more donations. The amount is not being changed, because 10 BTC has always been 10 BTC, and the dollar amount is irrelevant. Theymos had thought about adding smaller increment donations, however did not because no more money is needed.

[augustocroppo]

That would be a ponzi.

Isn't there am (open) financial overview made every year?

No, the books were never open.

[surfer43]

Donator / VIP tags

You can still donate 10/50 BTC for Donator/VIP status. It isn't really emphasized anymore though because the forums doesn't really need more donations. The amount is not being changed, because 10 BTC has always been 10 BTC, and the dollar amount is irrelevant. Theymos had thought about adding smaller increment donations, however did not because no more money is needed.

But what you can do with the donated BTC clearly is relevant. If the forum needed more donations, I am pretty sure it would lower that 
And why was it set at 10/50 BTC rather than 0.0001/0.0005 BTC? The dollar amount? 

[SaltySpitoon]

Donator / VIP tags

You can still donate 10/50 BTC for Donator/VIP status. It isn't really emphasized anymore though because the forums doesn't really need more donations. The amount is not being changed, because 10 BTC has always been 10 BTC, and the dollar amount is irrelevant. Theymos had thought about adding smaller increment donations, however did not because no more money is needed.

But what you can do with the donated BTC clearly is relevant. If the forum needed more donations, I am pretty sure it would lower that 
And why was it set at 10/50 BTC rather than 0.0001/0.0005 BTC? The dollar amount? 

Nope, Theymos has stated multiple times that the donation amount would not be lowered. 10 Bitcoins was about a month's worth of hosting at the time, which is why it was set at 10 Bitcoins, I'd imagine the fact that 10 and 50 are both even and common denominations is another factor to why it wasn't 8.79428 BTC and was 10 instead.

[theymos]

I've decided not to create an official announcement thread today. But I will answer some questions.

Who is the owner of the forum?

I've answered this before.

The forum was created by Satoshi and Sirius. Without any explicit agreement or assignment of ownership, it came to be the case that I am now chiefly responsible for forum management. The domain is owned by Sirius. I have no way of forcing him to do anything with it. (Though I recently did gain partial access so that I can change DNS records.) I control a lot of the forum's money. Sirius cannot force me to do anything with this. Various treasurers control other forum money; they're bound by the treasury agreements.

I am not a lawyer, so I can't say for sure who the forum's owner is legally-speaking, and this is irrelevant to me unless I'm dealing with legal stuff.

Who is the owner of the BTC collected by the forum?

I've answered this many times.

I control most of the money. I consider it my responsibility to appropriately manage this money for the non-profit benefit of the forum, Bitcoin, and the world. I take this responsibility seriously. However, I retain sole control over how the money is spent. No one has any right to influence my decisions, though I can be convinced by reasonable arguments.

The rest of the money is held by treasurers bound by the treasury agreements. Under the treasury agreements, I have a lot of decision-making power, but I can be over-ruled in some cases.

Again, talk to a lawyer if you want to know who owns the money according to governments. I don't care about this unless I have to.

Is bitcointalk a registered not for profit?

No. I avoid the term "non-profit" in official materials to avoid giving the impression that a government has assigned the forum with a non-profit label, but the term does accurately represent the philosophy of the forum. No one gets or will ever get any kind of dividend from forum revenue.

Why do you think we needed to spend so much for software when there are free or much cheaper option available?

The most popular forum software is:
- Old.
- Written in PHP, which sucks.
- Written insecurely and messily.
- Difficult to modify, especially safely.
- Not much more featureful than SMF, if at all.

There are a handful of newer forum software packages which solve some of those problems, but all of them are very sparse in features.

The goal of this software project is to create new, open source forum software which will compete with SMF, phpBB, etc.

What special features will the forum have?

This isn't completely defined yet. It'll have almost all features that we have now. A main goal will be improving filtering and data presentation so that users can more easily manage the flood of posts both board-wide and within threads, while simultaneously reducing the need for centralized moderation.

The $350,000 was just a down payment or the full amount owed? If it is not the full amount how much more could this end up costing us?

The total cost will probably be around $1 million. The $350,000 covers several months of work, after which I will evaluate the performance of Slickage Studios and choose whether or not to continue. In any case, the code will be open source, so no work will be lost.

When will the software be finished?

About one year from now.

Are you getting a kick back from this operation or do you hold any interest in his company?

No.

Any plans for implementing some sort of a 2FA in the new forum? (this is especially important for people conducting trades over the forum)

Yes, there will be 2FA.

What do you think about creating new boards or subdomains for altcoins for a recurring (monthly or quarterly) fee? They could even be excluded from the main forum's statistics, and have their own rules and policies (only retaining a few obvious such as no linking to SR-type onion sites or no trades of goods which are illegal in the buyer's or in the seller's country).

Maybe. I don't see any harm in that if it isn't too difficult/expensive.

Will there be a working non-javascript version of the forum?

Yes, though some advanced functionality may be unavailable without JavaScript.

Why is the forum paying people a fee to store the forum's bitcoin when storing bitcoin is free? Can't the forum find enough people that will store bitcoin for free?

Some of the treasurers do store funds for free, but extremely-trustworthy people who will do this are rare.

[surfer43]

Who is the owner of the forum?

I've answered this before.

The forum was created by Satoshi and Sirius. Without any explicit agreement or assignment of ownership, it came to be the case that I am now chiefly responsible for forum management. The domain is owned by Sirius. I have no way of forcing him to do anything with it. (Though I recently did gain partial access so that I can change DNS records.) I control a lot of the forum's money. Sirius cannot force me to do anything with this. Various treasurers control other forum money; they're bound by the treasury agreements.

I am not a lawyer, so I can't say for sure who the forum's owner is legally-speaking, and this is irrelevant to me unless I'm dealing with legal stuff.

In clearer terms:
Theymos owns the forum.

Who is the owner of the BTC collected by the forum?

I've answered this many times.

I control most of the money. I consider it my responsibility to appropriately manage this money for the non-profit benefit of the forum, Bitcoin, and the world. I take this responsibility seriously. However, I retain sole control over how the money is spent. No one has any right to influence my decisions, though I can be convinced by reasonable arguments.

The rest of the money is held by treasurers bound by the treasury agreements. Under the treasury agreements, I have a lot of decision-making power, but I can be over-ruled in some cases.

Again, talk to a lawyer if you want to know who owns the money according to governments. I don't care about this unless I have to.

In clearer terms:
Theymos owns ~5000 of the BTC collected by the forum

The remaining ~1800 BTC is stored by "treasurers". The treasurer must send some or all of the bitcoin they store to an address if theymos tells them to. They have 14 days to complete the transaction. 1 trustee or 3 members of the community council may stop the transaction as follows:

Exception: 1 trustee or 3 members of the community council may order the treasurer to temporarily stop all payments. After such an order, the treasurer must not obey administrator transaction requests until the order is reversed by those same trustees or community council members, or until the trustees or community council members are removed.

The treasurer *should* delay transactions as long as possible if the administrator is believed to be compromised, under duress, or acting against the best interests of the Forum.

List of Trustees and Community council members

Trustees
theymos 5E6B3F3BA961193C5C9B4435C6555693DAB591E7
Martti Malmi E526A9B27841593BC2439EB2E904B7FE1BBA4244
Stefan Thomas D16E7B0442B9F02E0660C094C9473700A4B08BF3

Community council members
nanotube D8B11AAC59A873B0F38D475CE7F938BEC95594B2
psy 7FB4272D4D2285DCEA2503EC8957CE7E0ECB3344
casascius 25AD1933B0D3FE72113595CC5A2EE8F1F1175A23
John 42B6DC513D9DFDEC4C287CD78353E637B3AAEEB0
Maged F7F974C4D111E276FF243A8D59A6076B32733620
SaltySpitoon 83F47CC601C25A3C85C0141990F7A516600E0ADD
hazek 0475D4C3B9C988B8B396BB6D4FD343B39E8803E7
FreeMoney 1Kwbu2Am9L2zbpUTUQ4c6PzhT6bD5CYqC4
Meni Rosenfeld 71A3B6A007510238CEE8A2C2AF79F1252A608F15
BCB D8249B78EB762933E1402A477ABE99DB1179678E

The goal of this software project is to create new, open source forum software which will compete with SMF, phpBB, etc.

IMHO this makes it worth it.

Why is the forum paying people a fee to store the forum's bitcoin when storing bitcoin is free? Can't the forum find enough people that will store bitcoin for free?

Some of the treasurers do store funds for free, but extremely-trustworthy people who will do this are rare.

According to theymos three people store funds for free. I don't see why they can't store all of the funds (Since they already store 85% of the forum's BTC). 3.5 BTC / month is a waste IMO.

[freedomno1]

Adding three since I didn't see them in the list probably the obvious ones but since it may be stickied into a FAQ.
 Best to get them out of the way

Will newbie hell return
Will Ignore Lists start showing colors with the new forum aka get the bugs fixed
Will the Trust System be modified or tinkered with the new forum or carry on from the original forum.

Who is the owner of the BTC collected by the forum?

I've answered this many times.

I control most of the money. I consider it my responsibility to appropriately manage this money for the non-profit benefit of the forum, Bitcoin, and the world. I take this responsibility seriously. However, I retain sole control over how the money is spent. No one has any right to influence my decisions, though I can be convinced by reasonable arguments.

When you mention non-profit ventures can you explain what sort of ideas you have in mind
Bitcoin and the world is a fairly large scope
An example will do just curious if you mean advertising to increase bitcoin adoption
Lobbying with regulators
Seed Funding
Charity relief
Advertising
Etc.

In other words how big is the world scope you have in mind

[tysat]

...

The $350,000 was just a down payment or the full amount owed? If it is not the full amount how much more could this end up costing us?

The total cost will probably be around $1 million. The $350,000 covers several months of work, after which I will evaluate the performance of Slickage Studios and choose whether or not to continue. In any case, the code will be open source, so no work will be lost.
...

So the $350k might be a complete waste of money?  

Why did you spend $350,000 if you're not even sure if they're able to handle the project?

[Kouye]

Why did you spend $350,000 if you're not even sure if they're able to handle the project?

And why did you take this decision while being as shady as possible?
I understand if you don't give a shit about my opinion (hence, I won't give it), but I'm pretty baffled that the staff & donators were not in the loop.

[User705]

Since the answer above as to who owns the funds was answered as "theymos owns the funds" then the answer to "Why did you spend ..."  is likely "Because theymos wanted to".   

[Kouye]

Since the answer above as to who owns the funds was answered as "theymos owns the funds" then the answer to "Why did you spend ..."  is likely "Because theymos wanted to".   

But now he has to answer about this very weird choice he made, on his own, in all secrecy.
Would he have endorsment from the staff and donators, this was a non-issue.
I just don't get why theymos puts himself in such situations.

[qwk]

…
The $350,000 covers several months of work, after which I will evaluate the performance of Slickage Studios and choose whether or not to continue. In any case, the code will be open source, so no work will be lost.

So the $350k might be a complete waste of money?

I wouldn't regard that a complete waste of money. If it's a wise decision, well… It's a start…

[augustocroppo]

…
The $350,000 covers several months of work, after which I will evaluate the performance of Slickage Studios and choose whether or not to continue. In any case, the code will be open source, so no work will be lost.

So the $350k might be a complete waste of money?

I wouldn't regard that a complete waste of money. If it's a wise decision, well… It's a start…

If you think that spend 1 million dollar for a new forum software (without any planning ahead) is a wise decision then you must be delusional...

Wake up, d00d! Feel the smell of coffee and accept you had been duped by your "benevolent dictator".

[KFR]

I wonder how many people would have donated had they known that their donations would end up being spent on a million dollar forum developed by a previously unknown friend of the admin with no other contractors even considered.

I'm sorry - I really don't have a dog in this particular fight but purely as an innocent bystander I'm just a little shocked.

If anybody here would like a full featured HTML5 multi-platform virtual world for less than a million dollars please PM me.  I'll even throw in a free forum.