bitcoin gives you a GUI. bitcoind does not.
Really? That's the only difference?
That's what I was beginning to suspect, but I wanted to double check.
So, somebody who wanted to create a pool, but was too busy screwing with other parts of their software they needed to create, could just run bitcoin --server as their "backend" until they got around to screwing with setting up boost and all the other dependencies required to build bitcoind?
Sorry, I just wanted to re-phrase my understanding of what you said, just to make certain I understand.