Topic: [ANN] Bitcoin Foundation - page 41. (Read 127621 times)

As Chris Koss pointed out, the average person is going to assume that "The Bitcoin Foundation" consists of the people who are "in charge of" or "invented" Bitcoin:


Only a tiny fraction of folks, the ones who are intelligent and thoughtful, are going to think "an institution financed by a donation or legacy to aid research..." The rest are going to think "So they invented/operate Bitcoin."

I assume by majority of users you mean majority of devs with commit access? I use github and similar tools myself and know how they work. I'm not familiar with gitian but it sounds like it's more strict. But if the people with commit access are all paid by the foundation, or if even if enough of them are then it's the same result.

I'm not saying that they would slip something in unnoticed. I'm more worried about code making it's way in that people find acceptable because the foundation says it's good thing. The foundation could frame things in a way that makes it seem like the only choice is to accept it. People make very bad decisions when confronted with choices regarding security, anonymity, privacy as we see everyday when something is framed as supporting terrorism, or other hot topics.

Let's say next year the US government comes down hard on the foundation saying the board members will all be charged as a terrorist support group  unless they bend to their will and do this or that required of them. It's easy enough to see bitcoin transactions being someday treated as they now treat trade with Iran or NK. So the foundation (keeping this quiet) dresses this up a bit and says we need to implement such and such a change in order to ensure the continued operation of Bitcoin, for the good of Bitcoin. Yes.

The problem isn't that they can make a change that could be dropped easily enough. The problem is that they could make the change and also wield enough influence to see it acceptable to a majority of users. If faced with jail would the board members bend or resist? Most business men would make a deal that involved giving up what they least valued. I just think it's better to not even have a place where this pressure can be applied, and especially so tightly coupled to development work.

I think Satoshi did many things right to make Bitcoin resilient and step by step this has lessened. This foundation, by it's existence, seems to be willing to give up decentralization in order to more quickly realize financial gain.

Unfortunately, whatever is determined to pay Gavin, the current remaining four will want the same compensation, if not more depending on the average salary standards of their respected trade. Then you have a couple other seats available, with those filling them expecting the same. And finally there's the pseudonym seat. Surely he's deserves the same wage. So let's do the math. Eight seats times a respectable salary of $50,000 USD/year equals $400,000 USD/year.

Somebody check my work.

~Bruno~

Your screenshot is clearly from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/foundation.  What could you possibly have missed on that page?


Every now and then, I like to click show/hide on an ignored user's post, just to see if I made the right decision before.  Thanks for confirming my judgment.

It would be laughable for the Foundation (or anyone) to try to claim complete control over Bitcoin.

Whenever I explain what CoinLab does, non-Bitcoiners always ask, "So your company invented/operates Bitcoin?" and I then I explain how we're just part of a diverse decentralized ecosystem.   Most people don't understand decentralized technologies, and that's just an inevitable educational hurdle you bump into with anyone just learning about Bitcoin.  

I've met 2/3 of the board members, and these guys are such strong believers in Bitcoin.  They know who invented it, why it's impossible for anyone to have complete control, and doubtless will be explaining these facts over and over to journalists, businessmen and regulators trying to wrap their heads around what Bitcoin is.

There's certainly nothing wrong with that but when six people get together and claim that they are the foundation of Bitcoin, with the implication that they speak for the entire community, that's a horse of an entirely different color.

FYI I am not from SomethingAwful, if that is your implication.

Me personally, I don't think that the Bitcoin Foundation is the official mouthpiece of Bitcoin but it seems almost a certainty that anyone who does not know anything about Bitcoin and stumbles across "The Bitcoin Foundation" is going to make the assumption that they invented the protocol and have complete control over it.

It is a community where everybody is free to speak their mind, including banding together to speak collectively.

laissez faire at its best, really.


I think most of the negative reaction comes from one or two high volume posters, probably imported from the SomethingAwful forums

What makes you think the Bitcoin Foundation is the "official spokesman" of Bitcoin?

This is just a group of people (who happen to be very well respected throughout the Bitcoin community) making an organization to advance Bitcoin.  Others have tried it, but this one apparently comes off as "official" because its organized, funded, and has the support of important Bitcoiners.  There is nothing "official" about it other than that many of the most trusted Bitcoiners believe in it.

The name suggest otherwise:



"The Bitcoin Foundation" literally means "The basis of Bitcoin", "The setting up of Bitcoin", and "The Bitcoin establishment."

Pardon my french, but who the fuck appointed these people to be official spokesmen of Bitcoin? I think most of the negative reaction to this announcement comes from the arrogance of a handful taking it upon themselves to proclaim to the world that they speak for everyone involved in Bitcoin. It reeks of a power grab.

There is probably a legitimate need to have an organization of this type but it could have been handled better. Of course, mistakes are how we learn so I guess this will go down in Bitcoin infamy.

You've been watching too many movies  

Peter Vessenes is the CEO of CoinLab.  I think the founding members had a vote or discussion or something to decide.

He represents the Bitcoin Foundation.  All of us, (even, *sigh* these forums: thieves, scams, and all) represent the Bitcoin community.

Yes. We have walk in the harshest of the environments in order to thrive. A strong protocol makes talking to CIA trivial.

gitian.org:

If you don't like the decisions Gavin has made, you should start contributing to the Bitcoin source code.  Gavin has clout purely because he has a long history as a level-headed contributing member of the Bitcoin community and codebase.  He's a rockstar developer, and the more rockstar developers we have working on Bitcoin, the less power any one dev will have (plus, everyone holding Bitcoins benefits from a more rapid dev cycle).  If you write better code than him, you'll become the new lead core dev. Please do try, we'll all be better off for it.

Gavin isn't Bitcoin.  The Foundation isn't Bitcoin.  No single entity is Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the sum of all the parts.  If you're worried about there being too much power in one place, don't weaken what's working well, add new power somewhere else.

I'm quite shocked that so many people are against Gavin being compensated now, after he's put so much time into this project for free.  


If you think the USA isn't a good place for a foundation, start your own one in Switzerland. The cool thing about decentralized peer-to-peer project is there will never be an "official" Foundation.  Every organization that helps advance Bitcoin can be judged on merit, and people can choose which ones they want to support. This foundation is kind of a big deal because the biggest companies in the Bitcoin ecosystem are throwing their weight behind it, but it doesn't mean a different foundation couldn't grow even larger than this one someday.

If you're worried about the direction of BF, become a member and make your voice heard.  The Foundation wants you to be a part of their decision making process.

Is having a developer with an undisclosed report to the CIA a good way to meet this goal?[/list]

https://www.bitcoinfoundation.org/about/board gives some info.

As to CIA silliness:  if you cannot trust code written by a pseudonymous individual named Satoshi with unknown backing (CIA? NWO? Taco Bell? who knows?), it is not likely you will trust a lead developer using his real identity.


*plonk*  into the Atlas file with you.

This.

Wikipedia on git:

I'll ask yet again. Who is Peter Vessenes and why does he get to represent the Bitcoin community? Was Gavin instructed by the CIA to make this "foundation"?

I'll give it 4-5 years tops before Gavin finds himself on the wrong end of a .50 cal dragonov's crosshairs, unless he's working with/for "the man" now.

(bits copied from other thread)

I think you are missing how bitcoin software development works right now.  All source code is open, and widely reviewed.  We make it easy to fork the code, and find a better way than our own.  The moment Gavin or anyone else introduces code the community dislikes, the code will get forked and the community ignores the changes.

Nothing in bitcoin happens without the consent of the majority of users, and that is by design.

The bitcoin design is used and trusted because it is open and available for deep study.  Nobody needed to know who Satoshi was -- they only needed full access to the software, for review.

For the technically minded, there are further processes in place to guard against hackers, or evil CIA-funded developers, adding backdoors to bitcoin:

• Other bitcoin client implementations exist, besides the "reference client" originally written by Satoshi
• For the source code, we use git.  Just like the bitcoin block chain, git is a chain of hashes.  Each and every change is protected by a hash.  Anyone following git in a decentralized fashion may see and verify all changes.  Any "back door" is quite public.
• For the binaries, we use gitian, so that outside parties may independently verify dev team binaries precisely match their locally-built binaries.  Bitcoin binaries from the dev team are not published until multiple sig matches appear.

Why should the Foundation put everything on hold until you agree that they're doing the right thing?  I thought Bitcoin was a decentralized ecosystem of organizations and individuals which can operate without needing constant bureaucratic approval from others on every decision... 


*facepalm*  You do realize, that's like, the first thing they are trying to do... 

There is a cool bitcoin KickStarter feature, just waiting for someone to employ:  Create a transaction that (say) sends 10500 BTC to Gavin, with SIGHASH_ANYONECANPAY marker.  Send it around.  Anyone may add a signature... but the transaction is not valid until the inputs reach 10500 BTC.

However, for now, a foundation is the method that has proved successful in providing ongoing developer funding for other open source projects, even as funding sources themselves come and go.

Even KickStarter does not provide ongoing funding, only bursts.  Not the model of stability that an engineer wants to raise a family on...