Topic: [ANN] Bitcoin Foundation - page 7. (Read 127559 times)

Thanks, I think that will help somewhat, can at least print copies to give to the authorities. Also good idea on the multiple languages thing, maybe part of donations can get translations of the bitcoin message out, I think some talk on another thread about Persian or something.

I'm not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but I don't see the Foundation representing members or other individuals in their personal legal matters around the world. Bitcoin Foundation is not a legal defense and advocacy organization like the EFF and ACLU.

I will, however, promote for the publication of key white papers on the topic that address the impotency of bitcoin-directed legislation and the immorality of not respecting financial privacy (in multiple languages, fyi).

hihi, sorry I don't have the will to read entire thread so sorry if this has been mentioned already. Can we expect one of the responsibilties of the Bitcoin Foundation would be to defend individuals and companies who will be unfairly discriminated against purely on the fact they used bitcoin for (legal) trading. In the future, there is going to be incidences of misunderstandings like if you or I have been buying bitcoin with registered exchange and the powers that be investigate us for suspicious activity, you get me meaning. So, will the Foundation defend our rights and argue our case for us?

The foundation should never be the face of Bitcoin. However the public and media outlets natural inclination is to place an identity to something that they do not understand. They will turn towards any organized representation that is Bitcoin and assume it is the "authority", the De Facto group behind all that is bitcoin cryptocurrency.

Less not forget that the face of bitcoin is us. All global participants. That's it.


IMO All that The Foundation should be is a group of like minded outspoken Bitcoin "network" members that speak up to guard against any future assaults from special interest groups.

A member could be Amazon, Best Buy, Even US Treasury.

But as far as you and I go, they are just 1 part of the global p2p network phenomenon that is Bitcoin.

Paying salary to developer/s seems counter productive to the whole open source methodology. Once you have a boss so to speak, you will not be making the same coding decisions you did in the past. Like it or not your future decisions can or will probably be influenced by the board. IMO the people writing code should not be members of the board. There is nothing stopping people and or the foundation from donating to developers via their Bitcoin addresses.

I like that it could be used to promote Bitcoin.

I'm not opposed to the foundation, just to having any of its members writing code for Bitcoin (not that my opinion really matters, I'm just one person in a great big sea of other people).

Hat A) The foundation is ineffectual window dressing. We pretend to advocate for special interests, but really we just make some irrelevant organizational decisions and they help pay for development.
Hat B) The foundation is useful and effective, it will advocate for your business' interest, please donate.
Hat C) The foundation is useful and effective and will represent the interests of the median bitcoiner. We do not take donations from special interests.

Are you going to settle on one hat to wear, or do you plan to keep swapping them depending on who you are communicating with?

I'm not actually against the foundation, but I feel like your response above is disingenuous.

Do you want to bet that people will be misled by this organization name?

It is easy. Make your voting rights proportional to the amount you donate, like shareholders, with the obvious difference that such "shares" expire, and there's no fixed amount of them nor a market where they can be bought or sold.
I've said it a few times already. I guess I'm on your ignore list:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1241674
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1241522

I suspect it was founded just to earn money for its leaders. If we won't get a positive answer regarding https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1240116, then it'll be obvious that MtGox has privileges in TBF noone else does.

Well the bitcoin foundation shouldn't be taking tax money.

Since when does a bot-herder DDoSing a site mean there is "much opposition"?

who's lesser? ... you lost us there.

bitcoinfoundation.org was down yet again today, shows you just how much opposition there is to the foundation. Also makes any investors question the overall stability of the Foundation. Naive investors must be thinking to themselves "hah, the super-nerds can't even protect themselves and their website from lesser-nerds".

Why do you think TBF is better at not getting hacked than other "third parties"? Perhaps Mark can comment on this, since he can speak from experience?


Why is this not "set in stone" in the current bylaws, since you seem determined on it?


What if an alternative client comes with an important upgrade before you do. Will you be advising miners and merchants and users to upgrade to that?

Yes! Did you notice how centralized the science has become? NSF this, NSF that.

+1kk


I am glad we agree on this.
Maybe there simply should be multiple ways of confirming one's identity ?

Also, the methods requiring more "work" from foundation (such as meeting new member in public place & exchanging PGP keys) can be more expensive, to cover the lost time.

Didn't you want to "standardize"? A change of plans, eh?

+1    Quoted for emphasis.

There should not be any major revamp in how development decisions are made.

50 BTC (or whatever) deposit, tied up for a minimum of a year (don't want somebody putting down 1,000 BTC deposits the day before a vote, voting 20 times, then canceling their 20 sockpuppet memberships and getting their deposit back immediately) is an interesting idea.

Call me paranoid, but I don't see many third parties who I would trust to not get hacked and to properly identify anonymous people. I don't see that third parties would have a strong incentive to do a good job at that. And delegating that piece of really core functionality feels like the wrong way to go to me.

For the record: I think it would be great to come up with an easier way for people to remain anonymous but still be Foundation members. I say "easier" because I'd guess with enough effort you could use a (physical) mail forwarding service and an anonymous email service to sign up with a fake identity. I suppose the mail forwarding service is like an identity-checking service.

RE: one vote per bitcoin: there seems to be some notion that Foundation member will be voting on things like "should a change to the core protocol be rolled out to support XYZ."

Umm, no. Foundation members will be voting for (and lobbying) board members who will decide things like "should the bylaws be changed to allow anonymous memberships" or "how much Foundation budget should be dedicated to X and how much to Y." The number of bitcoins you own has nothing to do with those kinds of organizational decisions.

Technical changes will happen as they have for the last couple of years-- get rough consensus in the developer community then convince miners and merchants and users to upgrade.

  Like in the forums, where we all agree on everything?