bitcoin.org , in danger of being compromised??

[fiulpro]

https://decrypt.co/33703/bitcoin-orgs-secret-owner-kicks-out-the-sites-maintainer

Bitcoin.org’s secret owner kicks out the site’s maintainer
The pseudonymous owner of Bitcoin’s oldest website—created by Satoshi Nakamoto himself—has fired its maintainer after a verbal dispute.
By Liam Frost



Jun 26, 2020


Cobra, the pseudonymous owner of the Bitcoin.org domain, has cut ties with its maintainer Will Binns over a disagreement.

Cobra said that Binns was trying to claim partial ownership of the site—that was originally set up by Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto—when he was just a contractor. Binns maintained that Cobra unfairly dismissed him, and is now looking for funding for legal action.

“I have removed Will Binns as the site's maintainer, during a conversation on Twitter he had claimed that his work contributing to bitcoin.org conferred on him more authority than what I had agreed with him,” Cobra stated.

Apparently the guy was contacted by Mozilla and they did struck a deal of 75,000$ worth of investment in their stake in his company , but Apparently they were already warned beforehand by cobra that , this does not mean that they will somehow own the website.

“It needs to be clear that they [Mozilla] are supporting you personally, and your own personal work (a grant is preferred here), but if they want some ownership over your company, they have to know that this company doesn’t have any ownership over Bitcoin.org,” Cobra told Binns.

Apparently Mr. Binns words are:

After Binns was fired, he took to file sharing platform GitHub to complain.

“Bitcoin.org [...] is now in danger of becoming compromised, if it hasn't just happened. @Cobra has removed my access and seized control of the site and accompanying code repositories. I do not believe Cobra is the sole and lawful owner, nor does he have any right to do these things without just cause,” Binns wrote on June 24.

Not only that now Binns wants to set up a fund legally so that the sites ownership will be with a trusted third party because he believes that Cobra wants to give the ownership of the site to someone else without legal process and such .

Gregory Maxwell, a former Bitcoin Core developer and the former chief technology officer of Blockstream, corroborated Cobra’s statements.

“Your position appears to be a misplaced and inappropriate response to Cobra suggesting that he was considering not handing you unilateral control of Bitcoin.org. I hope you reconsider your approach,” wrote Maxwell.

I do think the guy is not taking into account how since years the site has been managed by Cobra , we never did have any problems regarding the same , it might be a simple case of de-faming the man but I do believe as long as the site is owned by someone good who does know the essence of cryptocurrencies as a whole , we are good to go .

This site is in no way owned by anyone , it's owned by every single person out there which helped create it , centralization is never the option when we are talking about Bitcoin.org specially , we have already seen other sites being taken down .

Is someone behind all this ?

But then again what Binn is asking is not wrong He might be saying statements way over the top and accepting payment for the stakes might have alerted Cobra , because we all know how companies like these works , if Mozilla tries to own this , they will make sure at least there part is centralized.

It's not about money !

________________________________________________________________

What is your take on this ?

 

[pooya87]

This site is in no way owned by anyone , it's owned by every single person out there which helped create it , centralization is never the option when we are talking about Bitcoin.org specially , we have already seen other sites being taken down .

that's the whole drama here! the site is owned by someone and that is Cobra. everyone else who has contributed are just contributors and nothing more. and that (and being centralized) is not a bad thing as long as the owner is not malicious which Cobra has proven to not be that way for many years.
the claims Will made here are just outrageous: https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/bitcoin.org/issues/3398

[Carlton Banks]

This is not the first time that the bitcoin.org website has sparked controversy


For me, this is an inverted reflection of the Bitcoin movement as a whole: the authoritative view is that of the overall Bitcoin economy/"ecosystem", not of one website that has an easy-to-remember name


In short, bitcoin.org is not and never will be Bitcoin itself, so this latest soap-opera is big on drama, but low on substance

[Little Mouse]

I don't think Binn has any right to claim partial ownership here since he was a kind of contributor like what pooya said. There are a lot of contributors in the development of Bitcoin itself, would they be able to claim ownership of bitcoin creator?
However, so far Cobra seems to be enough trusted and I think he will hand over the website to someone trusted, not whom who wants to be the honorable controller.

[gentlemand]

What is your take on this ?

Every buck has to stop somewhere, and that somewhere is Cobra in this case.

I think he's a multi-personalitied weirdo but the site's integrity has been impressive and that's primarily down to his stewardship. That's all he has to point to when people make shrill claims. As ever, actions speak louder than words.

If I ran it I'd have a holding page saying 'Bitcoin is nice' and a blockchain download link and that would be that forever.

[mk4]

As long as Cobra doesn't suddenly "flip" to the bad side(like how his opinions on things on Twitter have been shifting left and right and everywhere), whatever. It's technically and legally his domain anyway.

If I ran it I'd have a holding page saying 'Bitcoin is nice' and a blockchain download link and that would be that forever.

I'm going to be completely honest here. If I owned that domain, I'd honestly make it a business lol. But I'd definitely strive to make it a far more moral and ethical version of bitcoin.org's evil .com counterpart.

[gentlemand]

If I owned that domain, I'd honestly make it a business lol.

I'd find the constant scrutiny and hysteria such a goddamn ball ache I wouldn't be able to tolerate it myself. It's always going to be a hot potato so I'd try to cool it off as much as possible. The fewer centralised points of contention the better in my eyes at least.

[davis196]

This is some weird drama.Some questions are popping up in my head:
Why is Cobra anonymous,while this guy (Will Binns) isn't anonymous?Why is Cobra hiding his identity?Is he hiding from someone?I know that Cobra is the undisputed owner of Bitcoin.org,but he is a controversial personality.Will Binns wants partial ownership,he isn't trying the steal the website and domain.Maybe he wasn't paid fairly based on the amount of his work as a contractor.I guess that those two will have to decide the conflict in court.

[mindrust]

Cobra owns the domain and he can do whatever he wants with it.

There is nothing more to add.

(he used to own btt.org too, now the owner is theymos)

This is some weird drama.Some questions are popping up in my head:
Why is Cobra anonymous,while this guy (Will Binns) isn't anonymous?Why is Cobra hiding his identity?

For the same reason satoshi hides his.

[20kevin20]

Everything apparently is about the money at some point. Unless the domain can be hosted completely decentralized and open-source and Cobra wants it to be that way, it's just going to always get to that point one day.

You cannot turn an ownership into a "everyone owns it" thing. We cannot have literally everything ran by everyone and anyone in this domain, although it would've been amazing if we could. When people fight for these things, you can see what it turns into by visiting bitcoin.com and checking out the big fuss that was made out of the @Bitcoin account on Twitter.

Some questions are popping up in my head:
Why is Cobra anonymous,while this guy (Will Binns) isn't anonymous?Why is Cobra hiding his identity?Is he hiding from someone?

Why are you using a pseudonymous currency instead of fiat? Why are you not posting your ID here, is "davis" your real name? Are you hiding from someone? Now would you like it if I started questioning and looking for your real identity?

This "we need to know who that guy is!" thing that pops up with every anonymous person in the crypto sphere is so pathetic. Why do people even care? Let that guy be anonymous, he obviously wanted to maintain his privacy for a reason and some people are just pooping on it. All you'd really do by finding out who he is.. is just putting his identity in danger.

[hd49728]

The news or FUD proves that theymos was right with his decision on Domain name update.
The important part is separation of the two sites as it was announced by theymos.

Cobra shown his plan to sell the bitcoin.org and Roger Ver popped up to make a bid. 

Therefore, we decided to separate the domains: I no longer have any access to the bitcoin.org domain name, and Cøbra no longer has any access to the bitcointalk.org domain name. The two sites should be viewed as totally separate, which in practice they have been for years.

[LTU_btc]

Bad news. It's not fun to read about disagreement. Cobra is mysterious person and I don't have big trust in him. Especially after these tweets mentioned above in past. It's bad that theymos don't have control of Bitcoin.org...

Cobra shown his plan to sell the bitcoin.org and Roger Ver popped up to make a bid.  

And it would be disaster. We already lost Bitcoin.com and it have very big roll in misleading people. What if Bitcoin.org would appear in Ver hands too? Now Bitcoin.org is one of first websites visited by people when they enter word "Bitcoin" in Google search and where they can get unbiased, non-commercial information about Bitcoin. It works almost like official website of Bitcoin.

[mindrust]

Bad news. It's not fun to read about disagreement. Cobra is mysterious person and I don't have big trust in him. Especially after these tweets mentioned above in past. It's bad that theymos don't have control of Bitcoin.org...

Cobra shown his plan to sell the bitcoin.org and Roger Ver popped up to make a bid.  

And it would be disaster. We already lost Bitcoin.com and it have very big roll in misleading people. What if Bitcoin.org would appear in Ver hands too? Now Bitcoin.org is one of first websites visited by people when they enter word "Bitcoin" in Google search and where they can get unbiased, non-commercial information about Bitcoin. It works almost like official website of Bitcoin.

Cobra is mysterious and Theymos is not?   How about satoshi? 

[hd49728]

Bad news. It's not fun to read about disagreement. Cobra is mysterious person and I don't have big trust in him. Especially after these tweets mentioned above in past. It's bad that theymos don't have control of Bitcoin.org...

Cobra shown his plan to sell the bitcoin.org and Roger Ver popped up to make a bid. 

And it would be disaster. We already lost Bitcoin.com and it have very big roll in misleading people. What if Bitcoin.org would appear in Ver hands too? Now Bitcoin.org is one of first websites visited by people when they enter word "Bitcoin" in Google search and where they can get unbiased, non-commercial information about Bitcoin. It works almost like official website of Bitcoin.

Don't worry. There are thousands of coins on the market, and bitcoin is only one of them. If people have interests and good willings to find and learn what is real bitcoin, they will do find it and the forum.

From the bubbles of bitcoin cash, bitcoin sv, bitcoin gold, and so on we can see the facts that people knew they are forks from bitcoin and believe in statements on evolutional technologies. They know which one is a real bitcoin and now please tell me why do we should discuss which one is a real bitcoin.

Which one was launched first? Bitcoin BTC, that is all we have. Any other bitcoin a, b, c, sv, shit, forks after that is not real bitcoin. 

[pooya87]

Cobra is mysterious person and I don't have big trust in him. Especially after these tweets mentioned above in past.

just because someone has a different opinion than you, it is not a reason to not-trust them even if that opinion were wrong.
conversely having the same opinion as you doesn't make someone trustworthy (wolf in sheep clothing).

[StonerStanley]

This is some weird drama.Some questions are popping up in my head:
Why is Cobra anonymous,while this guy (Will Binns) isn't anonymous?Why is Cobra hiding his identity?

For the same reason satoshi hides his.

Which reason ?
I will tell you why: because he is nobody and has no skill, so he prefer stay anonymous (and he'd better, because he's uesless)

Cobra is mysterious person and I don't have big trust in him. Especially after these tweets mentioned above in past.

just because someone has a different opinion than you, it is not a reason to not-trust them even if that opinion were wrong.
conversely having the same opinion as you doesn't make someone trustworthy (wolf in sheep clothing).

This is why cobra isn't trustable, he fired and "not-trust" someone just because this person had a different opinion on something that isn't relevant.
I would never believe or work with a person like that, he his full of pretention like his words on the Mozilla's intention which aren't even proved. What a dumb... and this little guy is the administrator of Bitcoin.org ?Well, it's just a little guy with a SSH access on a server and a bit of skill in programming Cobra is litteraly nobody and bring nothing to the community. I will never share a "bitcoin.org" link on my future plateforms. I hate that kind of persons who are abusing their power by lying like that (can he prove what he said about Mozilla ?)


EDIT: The simple fact that he's pretentious about the intention of Mozilla Firefox, mean a lot about his real face and behavior in the real life. Even if he's the real owned of Bitcoin.org.

[jseverson]

It works almost like official website of Bitcoin.

The thing though, is that it isn't. It doesn't matter whether Cobra or theymos has ownership, you can never write off the possibility that it becomes compromised. I get that it can suck to have no "official" Bitcoin resource, but that's probably for the best -- look at @Bitcoin on twitter and how much drama that used to cause (well it still does but on the opposite camp now lol).

And since it seems like you're lobbying for theymos, it may be relevant to show his insight on a similar matter:

The ideal solution would be to somehow stop people from considering centralized sites like bitcoin.org/bitcoin.com/etc. as "important", but that's not going to happen. Even if you got everyone to switch to btcinformation.org or whatever, then you'd be creating a new important centralized site which would eventually be corrupted. (Not to say that such an effort is pointless, though, if you don't like bitcoin.org.) All we can do about this situation is to just individually try our best:
 - If you see something about bitcoin.org (or another site) that you don't like, try to get it changed.
 - If you don't like bitcoin.org (or another site) or you don't like the way that it's managed, point people to a different site instead, or create your own.
 - If you end up controlling an "important site", try to keep it operating in the most correct way that you can, for as long as possible.

[mindrust]

I hate that kind of persons who are abusing their power.

Abuse which power? He owns the domain.

Bitcoin.org should not be used to ask donations.

Again, He owns the domain. He can do whatever the fuck he wants with it. All you can do is bitching.

[gentlemand]

And what about the fact that cobra is using bitcoin.org to ask donations and also that he put a new bitcoin address since June ? this guy look more like a scammer and a very untrustable person according to multiple facts. Bitcoin.org should not be used to ask donations.

Please list the 'multiple facts'.

He can point to many years of successful operation and the, sometimes, grudging respect of many people who are respected themselves.

As for donations, no one is forced to donate and most Bitcoin fans are too mean anyway. There has always been a donation address on there.

[gentlemand]

Please, list his "successful operation" and prove me it. Thank you very much  

Anyway it doesn't mean anything, a lot of people are doing a lot of good things in order to scam you in the end. Don't talk to me like you talk at a sheep.

'Successful operation' means the website has been up, visible and run for the right reasons from the moment it launched. That has been the case since 2009. There has never been any suggestion it has attempted to mislead people.

He's a bit of a weirdo and possibly several people but not a scammer.

If you're going to claim otherwise and claim something that no one else ever has then you'd better have some compelling factoids. Let's see them.