Topic: . - page 12. (Read 22431 times)

I don't think "staff" and "donators" received a terms of service when they received their positions or make their donations.

If someone did I would certainly like to read those terms.

I certainly didn't make my contribution with any stings attached.

Theymos is free to do what he wants with my contribution as far as I'm concerned.

I am still waiting to know who is on this forum software group that is making the decisions, I guess it is just theymos.

I love how people are glossing over the thought that nearly $1,000,000 might be spent for a forum/website like thats a totally reasonable cost and not sketchy at all because OH NOEZ we can't use existing forum software! Maybe if you actually updated the forum software instead of crying about how "older versions r better cause less features less bugs", you wouldn't need to make decisions like this.

That

I would have went with a Tender asking what specifics Theymos had in mind
Seventh Continent went with 2x that though

I wonder how many people would have donated had they known that their donations would end up being spent on a million dollar forum developed by a previously unknown friend of the admin with no other contractors even considered.

I'm sorry - I really don't have a dog in this particular fight but purely as an innocent bystander I'm just a little shocked.

If anybody here would like a full featured HTML5 multi-platform virtual world for less than a million dollars please PM me.  I'll even throw in a free forum.

If you think that spend 1 million dollar for a new forum software (without any planning ahead) is a wise decision then you must be delusional...

Wake up, d00d! Feel the smell of coffee and accept you had been duped by your "benevolent dictator".

I wouldn't regard that a complete waste of money. If it's a wise decision, well… It's a start…

But now he has to answer about this very weird choice he made, on his own, in all secrecy.
Would he have endorsment from the staff and donators, this was a non-issue.
I just don't get why theymos puts himself in such situations.

Since the answer above as to who owns the funds was answered as "theymos owns the funds" then the answer to "Why did you spend ..."  is likely "Because theymos wanted to".   

And why did you take this decision while being as shady as possible?
I understand if you don't give a shit about my opinion (hence, I won't give it), but I'm pretty baffled that the staff & donators were not in the loop.

So the $350k might be a complete waste of money?  

Why did you spend $350,000 if you're not even sure if they're able to handle the project?

Adding three since I didn't see them in the list probably the obvious ones but since it may be stickied into a FAQ.
 Best to get them out of the way

Will newbie hell return
Will Ignore Lists start showing colors with the new forum aka get the bugs fixed
Will the Trust System be modified or tinkered with the new forum or carry on from the original forum.


When you mention non-profit ventures can you explain what sort of ideas you have in mind
Bitcoin and the world is a fairly large scope
An example will do just curious if you mean advertising to increase bitcoin adoption
Lobbying with regulators
Seed Funding
Charity relief
Advertising
Etc.

In other words how big is the world scope you have in mind

In clearer terms:
Theymos owns the forum.


In clearer terms:
Theymos owns ~5000 of the BTC collected by the forum

The remaining ~1800 BTC is stored by "treasurers". The treasurer must send some or all of the bitcoin they store to an address if theymos tells them to. They have 14 days to complete the transaction. 1 trustee or 3 members of the community council may stop the transaction as follows:

List of Trustees and Community council members


IMHO this makes it worth it.

According to theymos three people store funds for free. I don't see why they can't store all of the funds (Since they already store 85% of the forum's BTC). 3.5 BTC / month is a waste IMO.

I've decided not to create an official announcement thread today. But I will answer some questions.


I've answered this before.

The forum was created by Satoshi and Sirius. Without any explicit agreement or assignment of ownership, it came to be the case that I am now chiefly responsible for forum management. The domain is owned by Sirius. I have no way of forcing him to do anything with it. (Though I recently did gain partial access so that I can change DNS records.) I control a lot of the forum's money. Sirius cannot force me to do anything with this. Various treasurers control other forum money; they're bound by the treasury agreements.

I am not a lawyer, so I can't say for sure who the forum's owner is legally-speaking, and this is irrelevant to me unless I'm dealing with legal stuff.


I've answered this many times.

I control most of the money. I consider it my responsibility to appropriately manage this money for the non-profit benefit of the forum, Bitcoin, and the world. I take this responsibility seriously. However, I retain sole control over how the money is spent. No one has any right to influence my decisions, though I can be convinced by reasonable arguments.

The rest of the money is held by treasurers bound by the treasury agreements. Under the treasury agreements, I have a lot of decision-making power, but I can be over-ruled in some cases.

Again, talk to a lawyer if you want to know who owns the money according to governments. I don't care about this unless I have to.


No. I avoid the term "non-profit" in official materials to avoid giving the impression that a government has assigned the forum with a non-profit label, but the term does accurately represent the philosophy of the forum. No one gets or will ever get any kind of dividend from forum revenue.


The most popular forum software is:
- Old.
- Written in PHP, which sucks.
- Written insecurely and messily.
- Difficult to modify, especially safely.
- Not much more featureful than SMF, if at all.

There are a handful of newer forum software packages which solve some of those problems, but all of them are very sparse in features.

The goal of this software project is to create new, open source forum software which will compete with SMF, phpBB, etc.


This isn't completely defined yet. It'll have almost all features that we have now. A main goal will be improving filtering and data presentation so that users can more easily manage the flood of posts both board-wide and within threads, while simultaneously reducing the need for centralized moderation.


The total cost will probably be around $1 million. The $350,000 covers several months of work, after which I will evaluate the performance of Slickage Studios and choose whether or not to continue. In any case, the code will be open source, so no work will be lost.


About one year from now.


No.


Yes, there will be 2FA.


Maybe. I don't see any harm in that if it isn't too difficult/expensive.


Yes, though some advanced functionality may be unavailable without JavaScript.


Some of the treasurers do store funds for free, but extremely-trustworthy people who will do this are rare.

Nope, Theymos has stated multiple times that the donation amount would not be lowered. 10 Bitcoins was about a month's worth of hosting at the time, which is why it was set at 10 Bitcoins, I'd imagine the fact that 10 and 50 are both even and common denominations is another factor to why it wasn't 8.79428 BTC and was 10 instead.

But what you can do with the donated BTC clearly is relevant. If the forum needed more donations, I am pretty sure it would lower that 
And why was it set at 10/50 BTC rather than 0.0001/0.0005 BTC? The dollar amount? 

No, the books were never open.

You can still donate 10/50 BTC for Donator/VIP status. It isn't really emphasized anymore though because the forums doesn't really need more donations. The amount is not being changed, because 10 BTC has always been 10 BTC, and the dollar amount is irrelevant. Theymos had thought about adding smaller increment donations, however did not because no more money is needed.

Yeah I get that, my point was for the leftover funds, obviously new forum comes first, but we could get a gold plated, diamond encrusted, teleport enabled, super forum for $350 000. It would be crazy to spend that much. There is clearly going to be funds over and above requirement.