Bitcoin Core Developers Should Be Paid

[maaku]

I respect the Bitcoin core devlopers but I'm sure they have got enough money for investing in Bitcoin and their own creation.

And where did those initial coins come from? Distribution is to the miners not the developers. If only it were that easy. Believe it or not, some of us are living month to month. Free software isn't a very viable business model.

[FreeTrade]

This is an issue that is being addressed in MemoryCoin. A percentage of newly mined coins are set aside for salaries and coin owners get to vote on who receives the salaries. Everything is controlled in the blockchain so it's fully decentralised.

[miragecash]

I think that the OP is correct. Any core developers who hold less than 20 BTC, let us know and we'll  all chip in to make sure that you have at least 20 BTC so that when bitcoins replace the USD, you'll have a nice fat $10 million reward.

Being paid a salary may or may not be counter productive. I mean, if they get paid even if things get screwed up and BTC tanks? Or if they get paid only if BTC succeeds? That's why the 20 BTC holdings idea is better. Their success is tied to the success of BTC.

[maaku]

I think that the OP is correct. Any core developers who hold less than 20 BTC, let us know and we'll  all chip in to make sure that you have at least 20 BTC so that when bitcoins replace the USD, you'll have a nice fat $10 million reward.

Being paid a salary may or may not be counter productive. I mean, if they get paid even if things get screwed up and BTC tanks? Or if they get paid only if BTC succeeds? That's why the 20 BTC holdings idea is better. Their success is tied to the success of BTC.

That's great. Now how do I pay rent and put food on the table for my family in the mean time? Yes, I have a handful of bitcoins tucked away in a never-spend paper wallet just in case. But sometimes I question the sanity of that as its current value is less than my credit card balance.

How do you expect core developers to actually work on bitcoin today, without being paid enough to live on?

[maaku]

If you can't work on bitcoin because their is no pay then don't work on bitcoin. As you probably know the more the core dev team changes, the better for proof that we are actually decentralized.

I'm not sure how that logic can possibly generalize.

I'm making enough to live on, barely, and continuing to work because I believe the work I am doing is important. But I get annoyed when I see this persistent, baseless meme that all bitcoin core developers must be posh millionaires just because bitcoin is now seeing some success. Some are well off, but others are not; and not for any reason having to do with being a core developer. We need to find ways for the community and industry to pay these people a living wage so they can devote 100% of their time and energy into improving bitcoin, rather than expecting or demanding that service for free.

[miragecash]

Maybe it should come out of those miner's fees.

I'm not saying all you get is 20 BTC and nothing more. That's crazy. I'm just offering something WE the members of this forum who happen to be reading this thread could do to help. I'm sure we could collectively cough up 20 btc or so, but I don't think the dozen of us could afford some dude's salary in perpetuity.

If I were the CEO of an exchange, I'd pay y'all's salary. However, I doubt Karpeles is gonna turn on the faucets any time soon....

Or put a "donation" button for the developers at the top of the forum's main page, kinda like how wikkipedia does it.

Or charge for tech support (use of this forum) kinda like how Ubuntu does it.

I think that the OP is correct. Any core developers who hold less than 20 BTC, let us know and we'll  all chip in to make sure that you have at least 20 BTC so that when bitcoins replace the USD, you'll have a nice fat $10 million reward.

Being paid a salary may or may not be counter productive. I mean, if they get paid even if things get screwed up and BTC tanks? Or if they get paid only if BTC succeeds? That's why the 20 BTC holdings idea is better. Their success is tied to the success of BTC.

That's great. Now how do I pay rent and put food on the table for my family in the mean time? Yes, I have a handful of bitcoins tucked away in a never-spend paper wallet just in case. But sometimes I question the sanity of that as its current value is less than my credit card balance.

How do you expect core developers to actually work on bitcoin today, without being paid enough to live on?

[miragecash]

Dude, you need to chill. Of course I sound stupid. I just found out what bitcoins were a few days ago. And, no I don't have  any answers notice how I said, "we could do X  or Y or Z." If I knew the answer, the "or" wouldn't be in there, man.

And calling the developer a "greedy crying baby" is not nice. We wouldn't even have bitcoins if it weren't for them. If you work and you get paid for it so you could feed your family. I don't see why the developers should starve.

If bitcoins are to spread in adoption, early adopters need to stop acting like peacocks and saying stuff like, "google it," or "you're so stupid." Though I'm a newb, I try very hard to help other newbs who are even less knowledgeable than I. I always try to answer others' questions as best as I can and I always try to help others as best as I can. That's why I am offering to help pool some coin for the developers and just throwing some ideas out there to see what sticks.

If we were in a bar, I'd buy you a beer and shake hands... 

I love when newbies come here and they always have all the answers... The more you post the stupider you sound to be honest. Take them out of miner's fees? Then guess what we are not decentralized anymore.

[gmaxwell]

Directing money to some particular set of pre-ordaned developers (or developer choosing people, or pre-miners) as part of the system is a point of centralization of the sort that Bitcoin seeks to eliminate.  People choosing personally, individually, and autonomously to fund work, contributors, or funding schemes they consider valuable is— I believe— the only method which is in accordance with the implicit principles of the system, though it may not work very well.  Sure, paying people with everyone elses funds is more attractive, but that isn't what infrastructure like Bitcoin is about.

I don't believe this notion of developers having oodles of coin and being somehow selfishly motivated to contribute to preserve their value makes any sense. For one— it has the freeloading problem, assuming someone has oodles of coin they can just sit back and let someone else do the work, or they can contribute and feel that a lot of other people with a lot more coin are unfairly benefiting from their efforts. For another, I don't believe that many / _any_ of us actually have the aforementioned oodles: Being around "early" by no means guaranteed ever having a large amount, nor did it grant magical foresight to not sell most of it at $7, and it makes it much easier to have given away thousands and thousands of it in bounties (which some of us are known to have done), or to have lost it in scams/heists.

Beyond that, I'm not sure that directly profiting by Bitcoin's future value is the best motivational structure in any case: It favors bubble forming activity (why make a profit only on the up when you can take risky actions which create volatility and make money both up and down, over and over again?)

My own motivations are essentially political: I favor a world where people have the option to choose to use trustless systems, and geeky: cryptographic protocols and high-risk embedded software development are exceptionally enjoyable mental puzzles. I'm certain I could get paid to work full time on Bitcoin, but such arrangements unavoidably come with strings attached— even if they're silk strings— which may not be very compatible with my motivations. Things like the foundation may help cut through that, but I think that unless we have multiple such organizations we risk creating dangerous points of centralization.

Another reason that self-investment doesn't make sense as a development funding argument is that it currently appears to be a losing strategy when compared to some of these high profile altcoin efforts. Right now it appears that you can take a poorly substantiated bill of goods and sell the promise of future development to the market and receive thousands of Bitcoins and perhaps never create anything successful at all. The ideas don't even need to be technically sound, the applications don't need to be well defined, the whole thing can even be more or less completely redundant with Bitcoin...

In general I think we should do all the things: We should have developers on company payrolls, community and institution funded developers, freelance agents, academic researchers on grants, bounties for specific functionality, independently wealthy tinkerers, etc.  Though I doubt we'll have any self-investors: They'll chase altcoins and business schemes that have more near-term upside. Any one mechanism has its limitations, hopefully we can support many approaches and gain the advantages of all of them.

[gweedo]

Dude, you need to chill. Of course I sound stupid. I just found out what bitcoins were a few days ago. And, no I don't have  any answers notice how I said, "we could do X  or Y or Z." If I knew the answer, the "or" wouldn't be in there, man.

And calling the developer a "greedy crying baby" is not nice. We wouldn't even have bitcoins if it weren't for them. If you work and you get paid for it so you could feed your family. I don't see why the developers should starve.

If bitcoins are to spread in adoption, early adopters need to stop acting like peacocks and saying stuff like, "google it," or "you're so stupid." Though I'm a newb, I try very hard to help other newbs who are even less knowledgeable than I. I always try to answer others' questions as best as I can and I always try to help others as best as I can. That's why I am offering to help pool some coin for the developers and just throwing some ideas out there to see what sticks.

If we were in a bar, I'd buy you a beer and shake hands...  

I love when newbies come here and they always have all the answers... The more you post the stupider you sound to be honest. Take them out of miner's fees? Then guess what we are not decentralized anymore.

Then if you found out about bitcoins yesterday, then don't put fore a solution if you don't even know how it work.

Yes we would have bitcoins if they left, that is exactly what I am talking about. If they left it would actually help bitcoin in the long term, but you can't see that, and they are greedy, hence why most early adopters don't like them. It is kinda like if the first web server was open source (which it was) but required payment before he would keep working on it. Now think about that wouldn't other people pick up the slack. Look at that now, the project is still alive and for the record this is what did happen.

[thms]

Bitcoin should be a collaborative work with people contributing code, writing documentation, etc.

Who would pay the salaries? Associating private companies with Bitcoin development could be a recipe for disaster.

[gmaxwell]

Bitcoin should be a collaborative work with people contributing code, writing documentation, etc.
Who would pay the salaries? Associating private companies with Bitcoin development could be a recipe for disaster.

Few people are independently wealthy enough that they can contribute large amounts of productive time to efforts which have no prospect of putting food on the table for their families. Effort in complicated systems is not a linear process: One man hour from each of ten-thousand people does not bring the same benefits as as a thousand man hours from each of ten people.  One man hour probably doesn't even get a new person through compiling the code, much less understanding it.

The selection of interested and qualified contributors is already thin enough that further limiting it exclusively to monks and millionaires would probably not be healthy for the system.  I too share concerns about distortion from commercial interests (in particular, modern western businesses are often incredibly short sighted and indifferent to non-monetizable rewards like privacy, personal autonomy, or social-cohesion), but when someone profits considerably from a work they have the capability, rational justification, and— arguably— the moral obligation to fund some of it. Commercial interests are an essential and completely legitimate part of the ecosystem and it's good that they be represented too, reservations aside.

In any case: I look forward to your patches.

[miragecash]

Maybe you should email Bitcoin Jesus https://www.facebook.com/rogerkver . I'm not being facetious. There really is such a guy and he's reputed to be really helpful to guys like you.

[thms]

Commercial interests are an essential and completely legitimate part of the ecosystem and it's good that they be represented too, reservations aside.

In any case: I look forward to your patches.

Why is it essential to have commercial interests represented in Bitcoin ecosystem? If people want to buy things using BTC, it's a public interest and the businesses go find a solution that suits them to be able to process BTC, at their own expense, if and only if they want to accept BTC, that's all. This has nothing to do with Bitcoin core development. Please illustrate your point about commercial interests being essential to Bitcoin core development.

As for my patches, I hope I can learn some C++

[Armis]

I respect the Bitcoin core devlopers but I'm sure they have got enough money for investing in Bitcoin and their own creation.

look at how easy it is for people to count other people's money

the work they are doing is volunteer, it doesn't matter how filthy rich they may be, if they want to be paid for what they do how is that different from the same person with no financial means seeking fair compensation for his human resource contribution?   To me, fair pay is a portion of the permanent added value, which isn't because the clock ticked; nevertheless, it should not have anything to do with the size of his wallet.

Bad enough people pay others based on some "prevailing wage", 'what the market will bear', or some other fancy way of devaluing one's professional worth, to do it based on the fact that 'he's rich already', or 'he doesn't need the money' should be insulting.    If they choose to give back the salary, donate the money, or whatever it's their EARNING to do as they please.

They are volunteers yes but I didn't say they got paid did I? I said they invested in Bitcoin which I would see no point in them developing it even though they didn't invest in it.

The context of the conversation is "Bitcoin Core Developers Should Be Paid" as such, anything you say should be construed by all readers of your text as for, against, or about that subject unless you say otherwise.   

You said: "I'm sure they have got enough money" in the context of the conversation any reasonably intelligent individual should logically conclude that you are implying that they don't need to be paid for what they do because they "got enough money".   The contrary conclusion is illogical.

[Armis]

self-funding makes more sense than getting payement

"self-funding" makes great sense, now define it.  What does or should 'self-funding' mean? 

[Armis]

The developers do get paid - in Bitcoin. If they were paid in fiat that would be almost hypocritical.

who is paying them in bitcoin?
wihat is their bitcoin salary

[Armis]

This is an issue that is being addressed in MemoryCoin. A percentage of newly mined coins are set aside for salaries and coin owners get to vote on who receives the salaries. Everything is controlled in the blockchain so it's fully decentralised.

that sounds like a responsible self-tax system, that allows the system to be be self funded and perpetual 

[Armis]

If you can't work on bitcoin because their is no pay then don't work on bitcoin. As you probably know the more the core dev team changes, the better for proof that we are actually decentralized.

I'm not sure how that logic can possibly generalize.

I'm making enough to live on, barely, and continuing to work because I believe the work I am doing is important. But I get annoyed when I see this persistent, baseless meme that all bitcoin core developers must be posh millionaires just because bitcoin is now seeing some success. Some are well off, but others are not; and not for any reason having to do with being a core developer. We need to find ways for the community and industry to pay these people a living wage so they can devote 100% of their time and energy into improving bitcoin, rather than expecting or demanding that service for free.

And that is complete non-sense, while I don't believe and I know for a fact not every developer is a millionaire, the goal of the core dev team should NEVER be for profit. This is how bitcoin is going to get ruined. Please don't be like Gavin who demanded he gets paid and is now getting paid. Remember the core of bitcoin is to be decentralized, paying developers to work on it makes it more like a company. To be honest I rather see after 1 year of development that the developer leave the project to show that we are not relying on who is working on the project but the project itself.

This is how the government works, everything someone does needs to be paid for, otherwise why do it? This is not how bitcoin should work, bitcoin in the beginning was never about getting rich or getting a paycheck it was about a revolution in currency and more a decentralized currency which no one could tamper with. But now it is all greed from the developers to the forum, it hurts more than anything and I bet satoshi is crying. It is like that pretty girl that everyone wants to date, but she is hurting on the inside.

So I suggest if you can't live on the bitcoins you are getting, leave the project, this would be the most helpful instead of being a whiny baby about how you don't get paid for your work on bitcoins cause that is what our lead developer is a whiny baby who wanted to force people to pay for his work, cause he has an ego. So get off your ego and develop for the advance of the currency or don't develop because you are just a greedy pig.

Clearly the rant of a slave driver-sweatshop owner mentality.




 

[Armis]

Maybe it should come out of those miner's fees.

I'm not saying all you get is 20 BTC and nothing more. That's crazy. I'm just offering something WE the members of this forum who happen to be reading this thread could do to help. I'm sure we could collectively cough up 20 btc or so, but I don't think the dozen of us could afford some dude's salary in perpetuity.

If I were the CEO of an exchange, I'd pay y'all's salary. However, I doubt Karpeles is gonna turn on the faucets any time soon....

I think that the OP is correct. Any core developers who hold less than 20 BTC, let us know and we'll  all chip in to make sure that you have at least 20 BTC so that when bitcoins replace the USD, you'll have a nice fat $10 million reward.

Being paid a salary may or may not be counter productive. I mean, if they get paid even if things get screwed up and BTC tanks? Or if they get paid only if BTC succeeds? That's why the 20 BTC holdings idea is better. Their success is tied to the success of BTC.

That's great. Now how do I pay rent and put food on the table for my family in the mean time? Yes, I have a handful of bitcoins tucked away in a never-spend paper wallet just in case. But sometimes I question the sanity of that as its current value is less than my credit card balance.

How do you expect core developers to actually work on bitcoin today, without being paid enough to live on?

I love when newbies come here and they always have all the answers... The more you post the stupider you sound to be honest. Take them out of miner's fees? Then guess what we are not decentralized anymore.

Your arbitrarily use of the term 'decentralize' is interesting. 

You acknowledge the Bitcoin decentralized system, you acknowledge the centralized body (creation team -- CT) that created it, you quote the CT when you feel it should be  followed by the decentralized body,  you point to one centralized body (core dev team -- CDT) to maintain the decentralized body and another centralized body (CT) for the basis for the illogical non-funding of the CDT although the CT made decentralized provisions for the decentralized maintenance of the system via transaction fees.

If the decentralized system cannot, or grows to a point where it does not,  operate wholly in a decentralized fashion, provisions must be made to facilitate it's modern growth and development.

Beit Newbie or Oldie no one in the Bitcoin biz has more than 5 years exp

[maaku]

I wouldn't call the core dev team centralized in any way.