Bitcoin Foundation

[AlexWaters]

My 2 bits

I think a Bitcoin foundation would be awesome, and is necessary for Bitcoin to scale.

I also think the decentralization aspect of Bitcoin is important for the protocol, but not the community / legal side of things.

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[mndrix]

Software Freedom Conservancy seems like a perfect fit for what we're trying to accomplish.  It's a non-profit designed to interact with the legal system, accept tax-deductible donations, hold copyrights, etc on behalf on open source projects.  They take care of most of the legal headaches so we can focus on software.

A few projects under the SFC umbrella are:

• Boost
• BusyBox
• Darcs
• Git
• jQuery
• Mercurial
• PyPy

It should be easy to start this way and grow into a separate Bitcoin Foundation later, if that's ever needed.

[Mageant]

Apparently a forum member has certain contacts to a person or foundation that might be willing to fund a "Bitcoin Foundation".
Please check out this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68162.0

[Otoh]

Apparently a forum member has certain contacts to a person or foundation that might be willing to fund a "Bitcoin Foundation".
Please check out this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68162.0

I'm a neighbor of someone who has an up & running NPO charitable foundation, see my OP in the topic above for more details on it, I'm friends with a couple of people who are also friends with this person so can pretty well guarantee that any proposal would reach & be considered by this person rather than just being dealt with by the foundation's board, I have another friend who at my instigation contacted this foundation & has obtained multi year funding for projects that she set up (I'm actually on the board of the NP association that this friend set up to apply for funding, but mostly just to help make up the numbers), as this foundation is a NPO it will only donate to NPOs though the person behind it is much more flexible if they decide that they personally wish to support something though I feel the best way to approach would be formally with a grant application made to the foundation, but along with recommendations from 2 of this persons friends, I have permission from 1 so far & am planning to ask the 2nd once I have completed quite a big favor that someone who works for him asked me to organize for this guy - I think he will be sympathetic

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Apparently a forum member has certain contacts to a person or foundation that might be willing to fund a "Bitcoin Foundation".
Please check out this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68162.0

I'm a neighbor of someone who has an up & running NPO charitable foundation, see my OP in the topic above for more details on it, I'm friends with a couple of people who are also friends with this person so can pretty well guarantee that any proposal would reach & be considered by this person rather than just being dealt with by the foundation's board, I have another friend who at my instigation contacted this foundation & has obtained multi year funding for projects that she set up, as this foundation is a NPO it will only donate to NPOs though the person behind it is much more flexible if they decide that they personally wish to support something though I feel the best way to approach would be formally with a grant application made to the foundation, but along with recommendations from 2 of this persons friends, I have permission from 1 so far & am planning to ask the 2nd once I have completed quite a big favor that someone who works for him asked me to organize for this guy - I think he will be sympathetic

God Speed!

[Gavin Andresen]

I said:

To get the conversation started, here are some functions I think a Bitcoin Foundation could perform:

• Interact with the legal system, where a centralized entity is needed: for example, to hold the Bitcoin trademark, own/control the bitcoin.org domain name, etc.
  
• Act as a central library for accurate information about Bitcoin, so journalists and policymakers have an 'official' place to learn about Bitcoin.
  
• Collect donations to fund infrastructure necessary for Bitcoin's growth (organize regular developers' conferences or get-togethers maybe? pay for development of cross-implementation testing tools? pay core developers' salaries? create a certification/testing program for Bitcoin implementations? create a central clearinghouse for information about legal issues surrounding Bitcoin across the world?)
  

I like decentralized approaches, because failures are less catastrophic and because I think smaller, focused organizations are more effective than big, try-to-be-everything-to-everybody organizations.

So I'm happy that the Cryptocurrency Legal Advocacy Group is working on legal issues, starting with figuring out what the issues are.

And I'm happy that LoveBitcoins have been starting PR/Marketing efforts for Bitcoin.

Today I created the Bitcoin Testing Project to tackle some infrastructure needs that I think are being ignored (rigorous quality assurance / testing):
   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=80019.0

[Bitcoin Oz]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=92684.0

Possibly related. Both the bitcoin foundation and clag can be somewhat funded in future through entirely free market means

[paulie_w]

I said:

To get the conversation started, here are some functions I think a Bitcoin Foundation could perform:

• Interact with the legal system, where a centralized entity is needed: for example, to hold the Bitcoin trademark, own/control the bitcoin.org domain name, etc.
  
• Act as a central library for accurate information about Bitcoin, so journalists and policymakers have an 'official' place to learn about Bitcoin.
  
• Collect donations to fund infrastructure necessary for Bitcoin's growth (organize regular developers' conferences or get-togethers maybe? pay for development of cross-implementation testing tools? pay core developers' salaries? create a certification/testing program for Bitcoin implementations? create a central clearinghouse for information about legal issues surrounding Bitcoin across the world?)
  

I like decentralized approaches, because failures are less catastrophic and because I think smaller, focused organizations are more effective than big, try-to-be-everything-to-everybody organizations.

So I'm happy that the Cryptocurrency Legal Advocacy Group is working on legal issues, starting with figuring out what the issues are.

And I'm happy that LoveBitcoins have been starting PR/Marketing efforts for Bitcoin.

Today I created the Bitcoin Testing Project to tackle some infrastructure needs that I think are being ignored (rigorous quality assurance / testing):
   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=80019.0

gavin have you ever read Tim Wu's book The Master Switch? check that out and please steer us away from this kind of situation.

[labestiol]

However, over the last six months or so it has become obvious to me that the rest of the world isn't set up to interact with a radically decentralized system like Bitcoin

The time of your post and the bottom of BTC/USD are only a few days off, you're a good market indicator Gavin !
Now tell us, what's your sentiment right now ? Could be useful to time the top of the current rally

[Jutarul]

The idea of a bitcoin foundation is a great one. However, it's mission has to be carefully adjusted otherwise we have corruption at our hands in no time.

E.g. I don't think the foundation should do source code development. Just let the core developer create their "own" business. Could even be for-profit! The certification is less of an issue.

[Coinabul]

I'd love to revisit this idea, any thoughts? Developments?

[World]

here is https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=113400.0

[Gabi]

After a few mins of more thinking...

Perhaps the idea of an "official" group is not wise.  Instead, the core dev team could create an organization, with special logo and name. This organization would be the de facto official group, but only so long as it held up its reputation. At all times, other groups can form and compete for "de facto officialness."

In essence then, this would just be a Non-profit, spontaneously organized by individuals. If multiple such organizations sprout up, then each community member can support whomever they wish.

Think of it like a market for competing representatives. No group official by law, but any group official by market sentiment. We would see one group come to dominate the sentiment, but Bitcoin would not be irrevocably tied to it.

No group should be granted an explicit monopoly... but an implicit market-derived monopoly would not bother me.

+1 to this!

[Spekulatius]

Gavin - seems like a reasonable idea.

Bitcoin would still have all the advantages of being decentralized (no central server, no office to raid and shut down. etc), but gets the added advantages of a core organization to guide it. Perhaps the core organization will get destroyed by the evil powers, but I'm not sure that'd be incredibly damaging to Bitcoin as a protocol. The community would just grow a new command center when the old was destroyed.

The main danger is if the community trusts such an organization too much.  For example- if everyone assumed the client version put out by the organization was trustworthy, then there is serious danger. A group as you propose should probably exist, but the community should remain skeptical of it, and always constructively critical.

+1 true as ever

@ Gavin & Friends :  Pls always stay aware of your power.