What does everyone else here do with their devcoins, and who here is a developer that receives the 90%? Are there any GNU projects that receive devcoins? Do any of the BSD's receive any? The value of DVC being so low in terms of BTC exchange rates makes me wonder if anyone at all is benefiting, but I'd like to know for sure.
I wrote an answer, pasted below, as a history section in the devcoin article:
http://devtome.org/wiki/index.php?title=Devcoin#HistoryBounties were offered for the creation of a charity pool which would give 1% of the mining to bitcoin developers:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/50-btc-bounty-charity-pool-setup-20455In total 37 BTC in bounties were paid to two people who started charity pools. Shamen made a pool but then abandoned it:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/12-btc-bountycharitycoinorg-0-fees-bug-bounty-25022AnnihilaT made the Mainframe Mining Cooperative, and it was successful for a while. I believe at its peak it donated a bit less than 10 BTC/month to the people on the bitcoin share list. At the time the bitcoin share list:
https://github.com/Unthinkingbit/charity/blob/master/bitcoinshare.htmlhad around 20 people on it, so that worked out to less than 0.5 BTC/month per developer. It operated at high power for about three months, which works out to roughly a 30 BTC total, 1.5 BTC/developer. However, it was shut down by the threat of a DDOS attack:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.585867so now the people on the bitcoin share list are not getting any bitcoins at all. They are only getting devcoins.
The reason devcoin was made was that even when the Mainframe Mining Cooperative was doing well, because it only donated around 1% of the mining, the developers ended up getting only a tiny amount. Charity is typically 1% of an economy and for all the talk of donations, charity is simply not enough to give open source developers a reasonable income. Devcoin gives 90% to developers, it is the only thing which is giving open source developers a substantial income at all right now, and once it gets known that income will be a reasonable amount.
In the beginning, devcoin gave all the donation coins to programmers, nothing was given to profitable projects. It was hoped that people would buy devcoins as a way to give money to developers, and that would keep the devcoin value high. That hope failed. Shortly after merged mining started, which was necessary to give devcoin security and therefore value, in January 2012 the devcoin market capitalization averaged around 0.00000025 BTC/DVC * 1,200,000,000 DVC = 300 BTC in January 2012.
Since pure charity didn't work, devcoin was changed to a beneficial organization, similar in concept to a benefit corporation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporationDevcoin would primarily fund open source projects whose revenue would be converted to devcoins, and secondarily fund open source developers with no expectation of future revenue. This has been successful, and at the time of this writing in August 18 2012, the devcoin market capitalization is about 0.00000140 BTC/DVC * 2,720,400,000 DVC = 3,809 BTC, of which 90% * 3,809 BTC = 3,428 BTC went to developers. The first open source revenue project is devtome:
http://devtome.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Pagewhose potential advertising revenue is small but growing.
The developers who receive devcoins each month are those on the bitcoin share list:
https://github.com/Unthinkingbit/charity/blob/master/bitcoinshare.htmland the devcoin share list:
https://github.com/Unthinkingbit/charity/blob/master/devcoinshare.htmlAt the time of this writing, devcoins are going to developers of