And Charles, I must say, I'm almost surprised to see you make nice with TBF.
You should be because this was one of my recent posts on their forums:
Gavin to be perfectly frank the foundation has done little that seems necessary to perpetuate the growth and stability of Bitcoin. For example, you have yet to embrace any education effort. You have no discernible media strategy. The foundation has yet to share any of its knowledge in a public way regarding their discoveries about regulation and laws that apply to businesses dealing with Bitcoins- this would be invaluable for the small entities run by entrepreneurs who cannot afford to pay professionals to aggregate the research on their behalf. There apparently is no effort to engage large businesses to build products for the Bitcoin ecosystem or accept Bitcoins for their products and services.
You cite that the foundation was inspired by the Linux Foundation, yet it lacks any attempt to make the protocol development more transparent and recruit new developers from industry. You haven't addressed any of the flaws in Bitcoin's proof of work that has resulted in a small cabal of ASIC miners gaining undue influence and control over the network nor the problem with blockchain growth eventually resulting in centralization of trust. Perhaps it would be wise to invest some of the foundation's money in grants to academic entities to study solutions for these problems?
But no, by all means continue to sue each other "without any conflict of interest". Continue to manage by fiat without any transparency. Please continue to hire lobbyists without any community input into their agenda. I'm sure an election where you guys have final say of the rules will definitely resolve all of these issues and make our voice as foundation members truly powerful.
The only person I really feel could turn this around is Jon. In the ED role, he has a chance to resolve the media and education shortfalls in Bitcoin. I've always believed this should be the only priority of the Foundation. In terms of protocol development and lobbying, I believe the protocol should be handled by a separate organization that works on more than one cryptocurrency and has strong academic connections. Lobbying should be a product of finding ways to make large businesses money with Bitcoin as it is. I have a very simple rule. If Goldman Sachs is making money off of something, then the regulations probably won't change anytime soon. Let's find a way to get big business into our ecosystem.