.

[taesup]

I am calling bullshit on the teasup and wangbus accounts. I won't change my mind unless Theymos states that they are the "real deal".

You are entitled to your own opinions and this is a valid concern. Maybe to quell any doubts, we'll ask theymos to formally introduce the members at some point in the near future. 

[gweedo]

Community involvement do not contribute at a pace and/or contribute without much accountability. I'd like to push this project past its initial workings then allow involvement. Forum software in general sucks as Theymos stated. For those who know me understand that I am in love with the idea of improving communication. I'd like to improve that and this is a good opportunity to do so.

But we want to keep cost down so why not open source from the start? It would the greatest transparency. Also if this is a passionate project for you why didn't you raise capital from outside VCs? Does the bitcointalk forum own a piece of this forum if it ever it went the way of the other open source projects and started generating income?

[Wangbus]

Sorry dude, you'll have to ask the remaining questions to Theymos. I'm being as upfront as possible and I don't think the amount is out of hand. Startups in the valley get 1M for a year with a small team very easily for a project and scale wise, this is probably much harder than a lot of things out there.

EDIT: Sorry I misread. I will have it open sourced from the very start once we are past the design phase.

[Wangbus]

Does the bitcointalk forum own a piece of this forum if it ever it went the way of the other open source projects and started generating income?

From my understanding, no... this will be completely open source.

[taesup]

No when you hire someone for $150 and you can't use it, it isn't a waste. When you hire someone for $350K you don't have waste. That is a huge sum of money for any development project, that could fail.

The person you're currently grilling is a post-doctoral researcher with a published body of work in statistics and electrical engineering. Please don't suggest that these people are overpaid or unqualified, or that they'll produce something completely useless. This could be a yearlong relationship, why start on a sour note? They deserve much more than $1,000,000 for working with this community.

I am a freelance programmer, have started my own companies, and if you think this is grilling then you are mistaken. This is how the real world conducts business. If I could show you some of the request and questions I get asked when I am doing a project, my grilling would look like a cakewalk. So now let the people that know what they are doing, do what they need to do.

Remember theymos was going to have a group of people to head up doing this and question the people he choose to do this. Guess what, I am making myself that official unofficial person. So in 6 months when theymos goes we don't have $350K worth of bitcoins anymore and no new forum is coming, I can sit and go at least I tried to do something.

I don't think they deserve more than $150K for this, most programmers can do this with that amount of money. But it isn't me making the deal so yeah...

We don't mind the questions. That's what we're here for right now, and why we've created accounts with our day to day handles. We're here to engage the community. So ask away.

As for the amounts being tossed around, I obviously can't speak for Theymos or for James. But I can do a quick back of the envelope calculation. gweedo, being that you're a programmer too, I'm sure you can relate to this.

A typical programmer costs around the price of about 80k a year (that's low for Silicon Valley too). Which comes out to about 37 an hour. All companies need to pay for benefits, overhead, rent, electricity, etc on TOP of paying out a employee. So normally you would charge a rate around 2 to 3 times the salary of a employee. That's already around 114 an hour, or 240k a year. And there's already more than one employee working on the bitcoin forums... so yea.

As a freelancer, I'm sure you charge around the same rate to compensate for the "self-employment tax," your own benefits, etc.

So this your only project? You are exclusively working only on the forum software? Cause I worked with design/development firms and they usually have multiple projects going on, to keep cost down for the clients. A forum costing $1 million and taking a year to build, I never seen this happen, and to be honest it is insane. When we have an amazing community of developers that probably love to dedicate a few spare hours a day helping this cause.

So in response to your previous questions, as much as I'm allowed to at least, we do have other clients and we do try to keep our costs low. As such, we believe our rate is competitive. In all fairness, we hope that this project doesn't just end in a year, no software project ever just ends. At least, not open source ones. We do hope that the community can contribute as well. In our shared experience though, someone does need to champion the cause and often times money is the best motivator. We hope that we can set a good base for the forum, get the designs out the door, then allow the open source community to help fix bugs and build features.

The most successful open source project are usually backed by some commercial sponsor. Node.js itself is backed by Joyent. Also, we want to keep the funding within the hands of BitcoinTalk. This also ensure that any commercial sponsor outside the community can't hijack the project by threatening to pull funds.

As for other startups, many millions have been invested into startups that still have not turned profitable but continues to succeed in their own space. Twitter is a great example of this. We are comparatively cheap on that scale.

As for the software itself, it is not a custom piece of software. When open sourced, it'll be available for use by anyone just like vBulletin.

[jhansen858]

therymos doesn't get forum software designed, matthewmwright holds a press conference claiming fraud, everyone gets out the pitchforks. therymos gets forum software designed, everyone claims fraud, gets out the pitchforks.

are you guys able to design a quantum version of the forum software where they both design and don't design the forum software?  that should allow both groups to be happy.

[taesup]

I'm sorry you feel that way gweedo  . I feel like you've twisted some of our words and have made some assumptions which reflect negatively on us. I could sit here all day and talk about price estimates, workload, staffing and whatnot but I would rather not waste other people's time. I do have some work to do.  

In closing, Twitter may have made a lot of people money but itself as a company is still not out of the red. (Last time I checked, pre-IPO.)  vBulletin is not open sourced, but it is also not a custom piece of software which is what my aim was with that statement. As for language, I assume you are referring to JavaScript? JavaScript just happens to be one of the best supported languages out there in the open source world and has more than one use, even down to the command line level. Forum software is outdated, there is a demand. We are helping to fulfill that demand. I don't know how many people you assume are working on this project. The NDA is in regards to prior clients and not this one. I'm sure you can understand that we want to respect our previous client's wishes. But I will guarantee that the software being built is not a rush job that we release and expect the community to finish. We are open sourcing the code for transparency, for the community to help if they would like to (I hope you find some way to work on the code as well, given your skills.), and as a way for theymos to give back to the community. I hope I have addressed most of your concerns. If you would like to discuss this more in private. I'm open to that idea, and I'm also fine with you documenting and releasing anything we discuss privately. In the mean time, I would rather hold off on these questions to allow other people to satisfy their concerns as well.

Good day, sir.

[surfer43]

therymos doesn't get forum software designed, matthewmwright holds a press conference claiming fraud, everyone gets out the pitchforks. therymos gets forum software designed, everyone claims fraud, gets out the pitchforks.

are you guys able to design a quantum version of the forum software where they both design and don't design the forum software?  that should allow both groups to be happy.

inb4 You are wrong because you spelled "theymos" wrong
inb4 forum software not designed yet

[taesup]

therymos doesn't get forum software designed, matthewmwright holds a press conference claiming fraud, everyone gets out the pitchforks. therymos gets forum software designed, everyone claims fraud, gets out the pitchforks.

are you guys able to design a quantum version of the forum software where they both design and don't design the forum software?  that should allow both groups to be happy.

We tried. It caused a rip in the fabric of space/time. Luckily the Doctor just happened to be around. (Sorry, bad Doctor who joke.)

[surfer43]

therymos doesn't get forum software designed, matthewmwright holds a press conference claiming fraud, everyone gets out the pitchforks. therymos gets forum software designed, everyone claims fraud, gets out the pitchforks.

are you guys able to design a quantum version of the forum software where they both design and don't design the forum software?  that should allow both groups to be happy.

We tried. It caused a rip in the fabric of space/time. Luckily the Doctor just happened to be around. (Sorry, bad Doctor who joke.)

smh I thought you had a NDA with your prior clients 

d-wave hired you didn't they

[Wangbus]

Sorry about my unprofessional name. Everyone seems to get a kick out of it so I stuck with it. Transparency right?

[taesup]

therymos doesn't get forum software designed, matthewmwright holds a press conference claiming fraud, everyone gets out the pitchforks. therymos gets forum software designed, everyone claims fraud, gets out the pitchforks.

are you guys able to design a quantum version of the forum software where they both design and don't design the forum software?  that should allow both groups to be happy.

We tried. It caused a rip in the fabric of space/time. Luckily the Doctor just happened to be around. (Sorry, bad Doctor who joke.)

smh I thought you had a NDA with your prior clients 

d-wave hired you didn't they

¯\(°_o)/¯

[e4xit]

So thermos has appointed wangbus to code the new forums 

I have to say (and I'm sorry wangbus if you are really you on here) that I like others am not instilled with confidence by:

• your name
• your github page
• your 'company' page
• your "'NDA'-bound resume"

Basically, you have nothing to show for yourself, which is slightly, strange...

Anyway, that being said good luck with it all. Will the project be developed on github openly from the start?

[Wangbus]

Extremely sorry for the lack of exposure but you guys can add me on LinkedIn or talk to me directly if you would like to see my resume. The project will be developed in open source but will not be accepting contributions until we're ready.

Your concern is understandable and I'd like to be as transparent as possible with development.

EDIT: LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/wangbus

[malevolent]

@Wangbus, teasup

Was theymos able to see any of your NDA'd code/portfolio?

[augustocroppo]

Design work has started on the forum, but the first delivery to this community is an auction system for the ad spaces app that will integrate with the current forum. We'll be revealing that in the upcoming weeks.

 

This shows that Michael could care less for the community. His priority is not to protect or to improve the forum. He wants to increase the profit generated by advertisements before anything else. A better auction system would allow him to have more free time to do his best for the community, which is do almost nothing.

[tysat]

@Wangbus, teasup

Was theymos able to see any of you NDA'd code/portfolio?

+1

Please link us to anything you can, I don't think there's been any sort of portfolio work posted.

[augustocroppo]

We are doing the community a favor by building this and also for the open source community because a forum of this sort isn't exactly high priority on the "hipster" Silicon Valley list of important things to do.

No, you are not doing any favour for this community. You are being alleged paid with funds collected from donators/VIP forum members. We are not in need of favour around here, we are in need of security, quality control and internal organization. We are the ones doing you a favour.

[btcmad1337]

therymos doesn't get forum software designed, matthewmwright holds a press conference claiming fraud, everyone gets out the pitchforks. therymos gets forum software designed, everyone claims fraud, gets out the pitchforks.

Thats not what happened at all. We want forum software, we all do, but we're not happy with the way things are being handled.

A while ago Theymos offered 5500BTC to make the forum software and had people from the community contact him:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50617.0

Hundreds of people contacted him, some people with extensive portfolio's and some people that were well-known and trusted by the community. After reviewing hundreds of people Theymos decided that he wasn't happy with having anyone other than himself make the forum software.

I can understand that because if you want something done right you gotta do it yourself and unlike Bitcoin where you can just send money to an exchange and get BTC, there isn't an exchange that you can send money to and get good forum software.

Theymos is still in college etc so he didn't have any time to make the software himself. So after a year or so of stalling he decided to hand over $350k as part of a million dollar contract to a software development company that is unknown to the community without telling anyone - not even other bitcointalk.org staff.

Unlike the previous offers this particular software development company does not have any public portfolio or even a company website. They also refuse to show us any previous work at all claiming ALL of it is NDA - we have yet to see a single line of code that was written by them. I am not sure if you realize this, Slickage Studios, but that money was donated by the community over the past number of years so all these people who are asking questions are the ones who are paying the bills, not Theymos - in fact I don't think he paid a penny of his own money.

Theymos hired this company without even telling us and this was the wrong thing to do, he should have posted here beforehand letting us know his intention to hire them and had us grill the company seeing as we were the ones paying for it.

In addition to this it is many people's opinion that the cost is excessive. You can argue that x cost x to make or x got so much in IPO money but lets not forget that the Satoshi Bitcoin client cost $0 to make and has spawned an industry worth a Billion dollars.

In the end of the day Slickage Studios were not the only bidders for this project and many more established dev companies were willing to make it for less (5500BTC was $150,000 at the original time of offer). In addition to this Slickage Studio's are not Twitter, Facebook or VBulletin and they cannot justify their costs by quoting their expenses. Also most of the people here would not like a startup working on this project but rather an established company with verifiable history and a track-record.

This is what has happened. This is why people are mad. Anybody would agree we have a right to be mad and highly suspicious of this entire thing.

[btcmad1337]

I've done some background checking. I don't have much on Wangbus yet but I do have some stuff for Ed (taesup).

Resume:
https://sites.google.com/site/taesup63/EdwardKimResume.pdf

Blogs:
https://sites.google.com/site/taesup63 - has some previous projects
http://taesup.com/blog
http://taesup.blogspot.ru/

Social:
https://twitter.com/taesup

github:
http://github.com/taesup