The one and only appropriate way to give away free sample boards is, because it creates vale for shareholders and definitely not "because it has been promised before".
Well, I don't have the list of sample board recipients, but I'm pretty sure this is the same list providing boards for development to at least myself (for BFGMiner support), Kano (for cgminer "support"), and Diablo-D3 (for DiabloMiner support?).
Providing hardware to the people responsible for supporting it in software is generally considered standard practice in the industry.
From the shareholder perspective, there is value in having these device supported for the day when they finally begin shipping.
But that isnt needed. The asics are mining already even without minersoftware-developers having a prototype. So one could think about giving small free samples away once the asics are sold, so that more minersoftware could work, but now it wouldnt be wise. And i wonder if even that is needed when the actual miner works without problems anyway.
Correct, the transactions are sent to the miner who then builds the block from it.
Mining software can then do various automated checks against other pools, a local bitcoind, etc.
Bitcoin Foundation cannot enforce anything. Miners need to "vote" by choosing where and how to mine.
I only say that bitcoin foundation is a center organisation that should have the stability of bitcoin in mind. So if there is a way to secure the pools, so that no attack could be done with their hashingpower then the bitcoin foundation should pressure in this direction. I mean it would be easy to claim that there are "unsafe" pools that should change something and the pools would follow when miners and bitcoinusers start to demand it.
It would be for the sake of securing bitcoins isnt it?
There are 400 000 shares of ASICMINER...
Each worth ca 0.60 BTC...
400000*0.6 = 240 000 BTC
which is (today at 48usd/btc rate) = 240000*48 = 11 520 000 USD
Am I correct here?
My question is:
How much is the equipment owned by ASICMINER worth?
We could compare it to Avalon's 65Gh/s @ 1499USD
6000Gh/65gh = ASICMINER has power of 92,31 Avalons which is = 92,31 * 1499 = 138 372 USD.
Am I wrong?
Your way off with the worth of asics. First... in some days we will have 62TH/s, not only 6. Then... avalon is quite stupid, because they sell their units for a price they would get in half a week, if they would let mine these units for themselves. So at least one should take the mining income of 8 months as the price for the asics.
That would be for 6TH: $1,011,202.39 per month and selling these 6TH would cost at least $8.089619,12 (when taking the mining revenue of 8 months only into account)
and for 62TH: $10,449,091.37 per month and selling these 62TH would cost at least $83.592.730,96 (when taking the mining revenue of 8 months only into account)
See:
http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculatorOf course there will be changes because of competition, difficulty and more asics will be bought on top later when seeing a months timeframe.
But i think the worth of bitfountain is way higher than you calculated.