Because I read what you say ...
You are saying that "need" is something I am inventing, but you know as well as I do that without the support of the free miners, BFL would not be where they are today.
If you think otherwise, then this discussion will get nowhere - coz I certainly do not agree with that.
I don't think otherwise, it's a reasonable statement and I believe it to be true.
"We have the backing of basically all the popular miners except (apparently) cgminer"
This is such a one sided and ridiculous statement it's not funny.
It blatantly pushes in everyone's face one of the biggest issues I have with the whole BFL <-> miner development relationship.
However, I have never said that other developers would not work on software for you.
Actually, you have, at least by implication. You asked (and I'm paraphrasing here) how are we going to sell our devices if we don't have mining software. That implies that no developer is going to work with us. At the time it was false for a number of reasons and it's still false now. But lets break down this argument for a second:
Kano, have you now or do you ever demand AMD (or nVidia and Intel to a lesser extent) pay homage to the developers to support their hardware? No? Why not? They owe you just as much as any other hardware developer, since you (or another developer) are required to write code to support their devices, both GPU and CPU. As a software developer myself, I find your argument spurious at best. I write software because a) I like to write software and b) I like people to use my software. My pool would not be where it's at today without the users. A number of my other software products would not be where they are today without the users (ShowEQ being the biggest example). I add support for various features in my software to attract users and have people enjoy it, not because I expect a reward from them.
Take out AMD support from cgminer, see how far it gets at that point. Why was it put in there in the first place, were you expecting a reward from AMD? No, you wanted to attract users.
I do know some of his discussion with BFL on this exact subject ...
I do ask you to explain why you think miner software developers should work on software for your devices for free?
You are directly implying that yet again in that statement, and the ONLY change to that is a comment by you today - never in the past from BFL.
I only know bits and pieces of BFLs discussion with ckolivas, so I can't really comment on that. I do know that going forward, those discussions will/would be very different. But as far as why I think miner software developers should work on our devices for free, please see above. If you want your software to be popular, you have to support the popular devices, otherwise your software will fail. Do you honestly think cgminer would be where it's at today if it did not support BFL devices? It's a symbiotic relationship.
Now that said, I am absolutely 100% on board with showing the love to the developers in the form of hardware donations to the cause because it's nice and it's the right thing to do. But for you to say or even imply that it's entirely one sided is completely disingenuous. You yourself even admit you do things because you want to and it's your choice.
What Tom has done, is up front clearly state support for some developers, (myself included) and then the next day you make an attempt to mend the issue and try to make it sound like it's got nothing to do with BFL - it's my fault
I'm not making any attempt, you brought it up. As I said, we have already made plans to show support to the bitcoin developer community and those plans have been in place (if not finalized) long before Tom made any announcements. You can believe that or not, it doesn't matter and it doesn't change our plans and you'll still be included on those plans regardless of the animosity you hold for BFL, if for no other reason than it's the right thing to do.
I don't see at all why you think I should have gone out of my way to do more than that?
There was absolutely no reason - all I saw up until today is BFL saying: sux to be you developers, work for us for free, that is to BFL's advantage - but we even say we don't "need" you to do that so it doesn't make us look bad expecting you to do it for free.
Who was expecting you to do anything for free? When/where did BFL say "Hey bitches, write code for us! And do it for free!" Can you direct me to that post or PM or email? I mean, I suppose that could have happened prior to me coming on board with BFL, but I very seriously doubt it. In fact, let me tell you how it really happened (because I do know this part):
1. BFL was not familiar with the mining scene and approached Ufasoft to create software for them and paid that developer to do so.
2. During the development process, the BFL information leaked and we started our journey (we being the Bitcoin community) back in late October/Early November of 2011.
3. Ufasoft development continued, but scattered support for BFL devices started creeping into cgminer and poclbm.
4. Frustrated with the Ufasoft result and worn out from all the complaining, work begins on EasyMiner.
5. Eventually full blown support is put into cgminer, since the Ufasoft software was a major pain in the ass to use. BFL never requested this directly to my knowledge and EasyMiner development slows down.
7. BFGMiner splits off from CGMiner due to philosophical differences, mostly unrelated directly to BFL, but mostly related to FPGA in general.
8. EasyMiner development picks back up
So as you can see, BFL did, in fact, commission a developer to create software for the BFL devices. It didn't really work out as well as they hoped, but by that time ckolivas et al had already added support to cgminer, so it wasn't really a big issue. If it were, BFL would have figured out a solution, either by paying another developer or finishing EasyMiner. ckolivas, Luke-jr, etc... put support in their programs for BFL because they were popular devices, not because BFL demanded or expected it. It was already there by the time BFL decided to switch the focus away from Ufasoft.
I simply say that if you want developer support you should support the developers.
I absolutely agree with this.
If you did provide support to me for BFL ASIC devices then I would probably supply support in return - or reject the offer of support from you ...
(and I will point out that I do that in real life - I often make decisions NOT based on profit - I don't consider money a commodity worth caring too much about - even though I have very little - which is probably due to that also
)
I'll be straight up with you here, if you wern't so vocal in your hate for BFL, the "support" probably would have come long before I came on board. That's the plain and simple truth.
