Again; this is not selling, this is a crowdfund. The moment the counter reaches 5BTC, djm will release all. So we all have the same software. Claymore has probably made more than this already.
I can't speak for djm, but I don't think he's gonna sell priv miners for neoscrypt.
Djm != wolf. Djm likes to sell his services, mostly to coin-devs who need a gpu miner. Wolf makes priv miners and sells them afterwards, only occasionally does something like DJM is used too.
I have no problems with this new kind of donation/payment/crowdfund, I actually like the idea. Makes people remember that nothing comes for free, but everything is voluntary. The liberal world we crypto'ers want, isn't it? I do think 5BTC is a bit too steep and the "waiting period" a bit too long, but that's up to djm, not to me.
Yup, and what's stopping him from improving it and selling it again or making sure this doesn't become obsolete immediately? Who is to say it's not already obsolete? What version of his miner does he promise to sell? There is no agreement he can't simply sell a better version and shiv you the moment this is released. You don't even know if he's giving you the best version. This may be a shitty version of his already better miner.
That's the problem with these unprofessional and backwater deals. Nothing here is transparent, you're just giving him BTC for whatever he's willing to throw on the floor.
I don't have any problems paying for a service either. I used Claymore miner for quite awhile and I didn't mind paying the fee on it. The problem is these aren't 'services', you're basically donating and he'll give you whatever he wants. That's really the biggest problem with GPU mining right now are these trade you once, shiv you later private kernels that you may or may not even know exist. Claymore was a actual product I could look at, choose to use, and see continued improvement of.
There is no continued support or no constant effort put forth by the developer to keep this competitive with the market, other private kernels, or even his own kernels.
Once again this is not about paying devs for their time! It's about them not making a professional product and deciding to fuck you over every which way of sunday whenever they feel like it. Wolf0 said in another thread he doesn't even want to sell his kernels to people with less then 50 miners because he doesn't want to deal with them - even if they have the money. How is this remotely professional or even transparent enough that the community can even see it?
They don't want to make a thread or storefront of any shape or size because then it actually turns into a market (in addition to them having to put actual effort in). They then need to compete and actually try and of course attract other developers who will see this market and start developing as well. Competition. For how much they rant and rave about capitalism and getting paid for their work, they really don't like actually having to work and don't like the other less savy parts of capitalism, a open competitive market.