Mining Farm Software Comparison

[mikeywith]

The explanation is not weird: If one is running a pool then one must allow the OEM firmware because that is what the vast majority of miners use.

There is no evidence that suggests that the above is correct, for all we know, it could be more miners use custom firmware than not, we don't know, despite the fact that if I had to guess I'd guess that most use the OEM firmware, but that is irrelevant, just because the majority of miners use firmware that violate the license it does not make them better than the minority that uses a different firmware.

With that in mind, what if it was the other way around? imagine 90% of miners run custom firmware, based on your theory it would be okay to allow them to mine to the pool and block the stock firmware instead?

It is tilting at windmills to do otherwise.

It's funny because kano said:

Yes the world is full of "I don't care as long as I get money" but I prefer to point out what is best to do, not what is mediocre.

So, the theory is:

Stock firmware violate: we can't do shit about it, most people use it, fighting that is stupid, let's pretend it's okay for them to do that and move on.
Custom firmware: it's just a bunch of small devs, not so many people use it, let's sacrifice those as long as they remain a minority.

Honestly, I don't think what he is doing is necessarily a bad thing, but almost most of his posts are "defending the GPLv3 license", you would expect from someone who does that to actually fight against all parties that don't distribute the source code and that includes Bitmain and the other major manufacturers, if he won't do that, he should at least not bug every thread with these comments about the license which he himself isn't honoring by allowing the stock firmware to use his pool.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Honestly, I don't think what he is doing is necessarily a bad thing, but almost most of his posts are "defending the GPLv3 license", you would expect from someone who does that to actually fight against all parties that don't distribute the source code and that includes Bitmain and the other major manufacturers, if he won't do that, he should at least not bug every thread with these comments about the license which he himself isn't honoring by allowing the stock firmware to use his pool.

Well, he is doing all that he can. He and -ck are not about to give cgminer to the FSF who are the only ones with the resources to go after violators. All he can do is 'shame' them. In the past already has made mention in their respective support threads of Bitmain, Inno, MicroBt and others violating the license but that is beating a dead horse especially since the other major (and Primary) developer (-ck) could care less. Canaan has been the one exception in that they DO (or least, did) publish their modified source code. That leaves nagging programmers who should know better and support the ideals of what Open Source is supposed to stand for.

How would they feel if someone decompiled or just repackaged  their code after adding a few tweaks to it and then proceeded to make money off of it? Pretty safe bet that said programmers would be highly miffed...

[philipma1957]

Honestly, I don't think what he is doing is necessarily a bad thing, but almost most of his posts are "defending the GPLv3 license", you would expect from someone who does that to actually fight against all parties that don't distribute the source code and that includes Bitmain and the other major manufacturers, if he won't do that, he should at least not bug every thread with these comments about the license which he himself isn't honoring by allowing the stock firmware to use his pool.

Well, he is doing all that he can. He and -ck are not about to give cgminer to the FSF who are the only ones with the resources to go after violators. All he can do is 'shame' them. In the past already has made mention in their respective support threads of Bitmain, Inno, MicroBt and others violating the license but that is beating a dead horse especially since the other major developer (-ck) could care less. Canaan has been the one exception in that they DO (or least, did) publish their modified source code. That leaves nagging programmers who should know better and support the ideals of what Open Source is supposed to stand for.

How would they feel if someone decompiled their code and then proceeded to make money off of it? Pretty safe bet that said programmers would be highly miffed...

 
  I don't know the Real back story as to why he simply did not decide to sue bitmain over this.
Seems to me there would be enough money to interest some lawyers in some countries.
I do seem to think he said something about an agreement with bitmain of some kind. That is why he allows bitmain miners on the pool.
So If my crappy 64 year memory is correct then he would be okay in complaining about someone using bitmain bgminer without proper paperwork.

It is why I use braiins for aftermarket. As I think it is its own code.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Honestly, I don't think what he is doing is necessarily a bad thing, but almost most of his posts are "defending the GPLv3 license", you would expect from someone who does that to actually fight against all parties that don't distribute the source code and that includes Bitmain and the other major manufacturers, if he won't do that, he should at least not bug every thread with these comments about the license which he himself isn't honoring by allowing the stock firmware to use his pool.

Well, he is doing all that he can. He and -ck are not about to give cgminer to the FSF who are the only ones with the resources to go after violators. All he can do is 'shame' them. In the past already has made mention in their respective support threads of Bitmain, Inno, MicroBt and others violating the license but that is beating a dead horse especially since the other major developer (-ck) could care less. Canaan has been the one exception in that they DO (or least, did) publish their modified source code. That leaves nagging programmers who should know better and support the ideals of what Open Source is supposed to stand for.

How would they feel if someone decompiled their code and then proceeded to make money off of it? Pretty safe bet that said programmers would be highly miffed...

  I don't know the Real back story as to why he simply did not decide to sue bitmain over this.
Seems to me there would be enough money to interest some lawyers in some countries.
I do seem to think he said something about an agreement with bitmain of some kind. That is why he allows bitmain miners on the pool.
So If my crappy 64 year memory is correct then he would be okay in complaining about someone using bitmain bgminer without proper paperwork.

It is why I use braiins for aftermarket. As I think it is its own code.

Odds are Kano will be piping in eventually but suing Bitmain in China back then was a non-starter. He did do some work for them regarding the S1 but shelved it after BM refused to address the terrible performance of their FPGA driver. Beyond that, for a time both he and -ck did bug BM enough that as they released new miners Bitmain eventually (several months after release) *would* publish their source code for miners up to the early S9's.

I might add that Kano does have better performing versions of firmware for the S1 & S3's on his dl site. Also of course has the full source code for them there as well.

Yes, Braiins is 'Kano Approved' as an original work. Don't know how much is just a re-write of cgminer using a different language (Rust) and how much is new 'clean' code but the key point is that Braiins published the source code.

[kano]

...
So it is correct if we really stop providing service to firmware which violate the license there will be no one left, excluding braiins.
...

False.

Even the Bitmain S9 source for their modified cgminer is available online.
Just every aftermarket firmware (other than bos) likes to imagine that they can make minor changes to the code and keep those changes to themselves.
Bunch of scammers, to which I'd add you to the list, since you are continually trying to tell me why you should be allowed to violate the license, and that you do violate the license.

...
I do seem to think he said something about an agreement with bitmain of some kind. That is why he allows bitmain miners on the pool.
So If my crappy 64 year memory is correct then
...

Alas it's not.
Never had an agreement in any way related to allowing anyone to violate the license, and never said I did.
... and I don't have the full rights to cgminer to ever do that anyway - it's written by a bunch of people, with 3 main developers, and with each added driver, a developer who's done most of the work on it (often from those 3)

The most recent addition there is of course vh, who does the gekko driver development with his changes on his public git.

... and it's fun to add how not doing this can cause problems:
Look at the Apollo miner where they've written or got a closed source miner from somewhere else, and people asking in their thread how to deal with various problems with it (since it's clearly not well debugged) and all that happens is ... they have to wait for one person to answer since no one else can see the source code and work out what's going on ... fun

[mikeywith]

Even the Bitmain S9 source for their modified cgminer is available online.

Then you should only allow S9s to mine to your pool because I can't find the source code for S11, T11, S15, all of the 17 and 19 series, if publishing a single version gives them the permission to not publish the rest, all these custom firmware devs can just publish one version for a given miner and keep the rest.

Give up Kano, Bitmain gears with the stock firmware do violate the GPLv3 license in the same manner that all of these custom devs do and yet you are fine with allowing them to use your pool, it's just easier to deny that than having to admit that you are cherry-picking who to "fight".  

[kano]

Is this the 2nd or 3rd time you've asked this after I've made a post replying to you explaining why?
Please go visit a doctor and have a check for Alzheimer's

Though I guess we are now getting to 4th or 5th or 6th ...

Edit: and I'm not gonna go look for that post for you - you go find it - you forgot it.
I'm not a forum index for you.
Though I may have posted about it twice, not just once.

[s265925]

Bitmain gears with the stock firmware do violate the GPLv3 license in the same manner that all of these custom devs do.

Just want to mention I either cant find the source code for following brands.
Ebang
Whatsminer
InnoSilicon
Cheetah Miner
Dragon Mint
Bitfily
Todek
PandaMiner
​Baikal
StrongU   
Lovecore
Goldshell
,...

Even the Bitmain S9 source for their modified cgminer is available online.

So you earlier mentioned that every distribution should publish source code! only specific version of s9 which I believe it is too old is ok?!
What about other models?
If a custom firmware developer releases a source code from an old version which is impossible to find if it is the correct one, you will be satisfied?
I can't get it, why it is important to not replace a firmware with another one with the same condition which works better that stock one?
Why should anybody care about license since the big companies already ignore it and you as one of the developers accepted the situation?
What I see here is that you are only making excuses.

I totally agree with mikeywith, you are cherry-picking who to "fight".

[EmptyCarts]

Awesomeminer and HiveFarm violate the cgminer license since.
They have firmware that runs with their software that violates the license.

I've no idea about the other two.

Bro you are that guy? tbh so annoying. I noticed this message on other threads. Learn to debug their firmware and find out for yourself if they are doing anything bad and stfu. your messages don't help anything or anyone. 

[NotFuzzyWarm]

...

Dude - copy/pasting snippets from articles without links to the source is PLAGERISM. That will quickly lead to being banned.
Even worse - that is very old information mentioning GPU which are useless for mining Bitcoin.

[kano]

Awesomeminer and HiveFarm violate the cgminer license since.
They have firmware that runs with their software that violates the license.

I've no idea about the other two.

Bro you are that guy? tbh so annoying. I noticed this message on other threads. Learn to debug their firmware and find out for yourself if they are doing anything bad and stfu. your messages don't help anything or anyone.  

They violate my license.
Of course I point that out.

[suboo112123]

What is the best mining software? I heard about some mining software like kryptex, BeMine, ECOS, Shamining.. so what do you recommend for BTC mining?

[NotFuzzyWarm]

What is the best mining software? I heard about some mining software like kryptex, BeMine, ECOS, Shamining.. so what do you recommend for BTC mining?

NONE. Read the post pinned to the top of the Mining area for why
Mainly point-3:

3. Mining BITCOIN is done exclusively with dedicated BITCOIN mining hardware based on ASICs - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application-specific_integrated_circuit . You CAN NOT meaningfully mine bitcoin today with CPU, GPU or even FPGAs. Bitcoin difficulty adapts to match the amount of mining done on the network and has reached levels trillions of times too high to mine meaningfully with PCs, laptops, tablets, phones, webpages, javascript, GPUs, and even generalised SHA hardware. You will not find software in this section to help you mine bitcoin in this absurdly inefficient manner in this subforum. It would cost you thousands of dollars in electricity per year to earn only a few cents in bitcoin. Even if you combined all the computers in the world, including all known supercomputer, you would not even approach 0.1% of the bitcoin hashrate today. Any discussion outside of ASIC related mining, except in the interests of academia, will be moved to the altcoin mining section. There isn't any point attempting to mine bitcoin with CPU or GPU even in the interests of learning as it shares almost nothing with how bitcoin is mined with ASICs and will not teach you anything.

The software you mentioned are all for mining altcoins - not Bitcoin and as such are off-topic for this area of the Forum.

[Tsub]

That is why we have one month free subscription for Mineitor! just test it and find out your self.
We have 24/7 support. and also we have features that is unique to Mineitor.
E.g. Remote-browser  or Maintenance-Management or Customer-management , ...

This one violates the cgminer license also since they provide a firmware without the miner source code.

Kano,

I think most of the folks running higher end miners don't use custom ASIC code given that it violates warranty, etc.  Feels like custom ASIC code is a way to extend the useful life of an old miner and try to make it worth running at a profit.

I use Mineitor as a farm management system to query my stock rigs and give me performance history, temp, etc.  So honestly I am not violating anything. 

I do wish the old inefficient miners would just die and force folks to buy the newer, highly efficient miners (lowest joule / hash ratio).

Its like trying to keep that old v8 Plymouth going.  Let it die, buy something more fuel efficient.  The ecosystem is not in that much desperate need of those Th.