Topic: Bitcoinfoundation.org - Is it worth joining? - page 2. (Read 3928 times)

I think we need an actual name, if you leave bitcoins for whatever reason I think there should be a backup person, this is only going to lead to confusion on the forums and could be the thing, that could bring bitcoins from $16 right back to $5 or even $2.

Ohhh and you know how long thing would take if he wasn't getting paid... I am just saying there like 10 core developers between them and there time, they couldn't handle the software. I just think that one person handling the lead on such a revolutionary idea is bad news. Remember I want to run a full node, currently there is no other option. I think this is classic monopoly and if Gavin was unable to do his job tomorrow, bitcoin would greatly stuffer, we need more lead developers, maybe we can get 3 people on board I feel little bit better. In reality one person that relied on this heavy in this much a decentralized way, is insanity!

Also I never talked about bounties, actually I would disagree with a bounties model, that code is usually rushed and very buggy. I think people that take on the job of bitcoin-qt want to give something back. Hey I knew C++ and python at the level I know other languages I would be right there helping sadly I can't.

Mozilla, makes a browser... i don't see any parallel and I think your miss understood why I disagree with Gavin getting paid. I feel like it is giving too much power to on person, which it is cause no ONE has said an actual person's name IF Gavin was unable to do bitcoins anymore.

Fair enough. How about:
D) Gavin is greatly encouraged through monetary incentive to work harder, longer, and faster on various fixes and features for Bitcoin-QT.  Instead of things taking months or years to get fixed by whomever feels like they want to tackle it in their spare time, the paid full-time developer Gavin can address problems in days or weeks instead.  And given that the foundation believes he is the best/most efficient/most trustworthy coder on the QT project, he gets paid.

Another way of going about it might be to offer bounties on various bugfixes and features, but how do you know that the person implementing the fix is trustworthy?  What happens when their sloppy coding results in more bugs found down the line?  What if their documentation is poor?  Etc, etc.

Mozilla pays workers to work on their software, but many people also make their own contributions on a voluntary basis.  How does that differ from this current situation in Bitcoin?  Gavin is a paid lead developer, and everyone else can contribute at their leisure on a voluntary basis.

+1 but...

And there is a big BUT, we have to have some incentives system in place for the main developers, the ones that really do the hard work like Gavin and team, because if we don't we're being at risk of having the highest bidders push changes over time and corrupt the system from within, always in their own interest.

I'm not part of the Foundation, but seeing how things are taking course lately I'm thinking seriously about paying my subscription and support the developers for their awesome work. Bitcoin has just started to gain traction but allot has to be done to gain mainstream adoption, and we will surely not be there real soon if we're scattered all around. I remember someone's comment from these forums: voluntarily joining forces is how free market gets things done, and is good.


Edit: I just signed up for a year, hope I support the devs and learn something useful too.

Gavin: I think I may have asked this previously ... do you have a donation address?

(One for those of us who would just like to drop a few coins into your own pocket now and then, without signing up to anything.) Thnx.

Edit: you can PM it to me if you would like to keep it private.

RE: what's my role in the core team:  I try to do whatever needs to get done, that isn't getting done.  Today I'm cross-compiling the 0.8 release and testing it on Windows, trying to track down a crash-at-exit issue and an excessive-memory-use issue that seems to only happen on Windows.

When I'm not doing nitty-gritty things like that, I try to work on big, what-is-most-likely-to-make-Bitcoin-succeed problems.

RE: why pay me a salary?  "why pay for the cow if you can get the milk for free?"

I told myself (and my wife) a couple of years ago that I wasn't going to sink dollars into Bitcoin-- that I'd sink time into it, and that I'd EARN bitcoins by starting a bitcoin-related startup.

Well, there's enough core development work to keep me busy full time. I wasn't very happy doing core development work AND trying to make ClearCoin happen; I'm happier when I can concentrate on one thing.  Besides, having my own startup introduces potential conflicts of interest (ClearCoin sparked conspiracy theories about why I push for multisig transactions so hard).

RE: what if I get hit by a bus?

Then the other core developers will carry on without me. I'm not indispensable.

RE: Why should you join the Foundation?  What is in it for you, personally?

That is a hard question, because you can "free ride" -- if we're successful making Bitcoin successful, everybody will benefit. Personally, I don't respect people with that kind of "I'm not going to do it because I'm sure somebody else will" attitude, and I think in the long run the people who take the risks and roll up their sleeves and do the work needed tend to win in the end.

Really, the main benefit of joining the Foundation is it is an organization full of people who are rolling up their sleeves and doing the work. If you're smart, you'll realize that networking with those types of people is to your long-term benefit.

It may seem but it's not.

What I meant is, bitcoin is a technology (general) but also a particular implementation. Bitcoin.org is catering to the implementation. That in itself seems like a centralization of sorts.

People can put up their own sites to promote their own Bitcoin client. And no, of course he has no control over the blockchain.

This is how I understood it too, but it begs the question: What is bitcoin.org representing? The technology or the current blockchain? If it's just representing the blockchain, then Gavin (and whomever else has permissions to accept PUSH requests) has total control of the entire network. If it's representing the technology that powers the blockchain, why not revamp the bitcoin.org website to allow people to publish their own versions of bitcoin, including alt coins, forked chains, etc? They wouldn't go anywhere (I guess), but like voting, it would at least in the sense of voting for elections, it would make people feel like they have a choice in the matter.

What do you think?

Gavin is not indispensable to bitcoin. He has contributed a lot to development but there isn't any reason to believe Bitcoin would fail without Gavin. Without Gavin, one or more individuals would most likely step up to fill his shoes. They would probably prefer to be paid, too.

As far as I understand it anyone can fork the code, change it, package it and freely distribute their version, no approval necessary by anyone. What does require approval is distribution through bitcoin.org. (someone please correct me if this isn't accurate)

Exactly. It'd be like saying that Science is centralized just because not everyone can understand it. You could of course argue that science kind of is centralized by the governments and institutions, but I'm not quite sure about that. One thing I have felt odd about is requiring just a handful of bitcoin developers to "approve" push requests on Github itself kind of makes it centralized, at least for the current blockchain if you ask me. I'm comfortable that nothing nefarious would get past the current community, but that is also true for small governments and look how that turned out. I can imagine that later on the slogan will become "Bitcoin, decentralized and anyone can edit the code* (Code editors must be pre-approved by a panel of the richest guys in Bitcoin)"

Yes it does, he has full control of it. Also what if the old "bus hits Gavin tomorrow" situation who would take over?

Then the other developers should press the alarm button tonight!

Just because nobody have the skills like Gavin to develop the bitcoin protocol, doesn't mean it's centralized.

What if there is no other developer that can take over. What if Gavin isn't expendable, and that no other developer can take control of the codebase, well then sir welcome to non-decentralized currency and we are lying to everyone that uses bitcoin-qt/bitcoind.

The bus factor should be changed.

I believe that paying Gavin, so he can focus 100% on Bitcoin, is a good investment. That's why I support the foundation.

If Gavin disappeared, the foundation would probably have paid an other developer who was taking over his job. But I'm very happy that Gavin is the leader of the development group now.

I couldn't agree more with the above. If Gavin is indispensable to Bitcoin then that is highly concerning news to me.