This is an Open-Source project first and foremost. Think about what that means for a second.
"In production and development, open source as a development model promotes a universal access via a free license to a product's design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint, including subsequent improvements to it by anyone."
There are to routes we can go, 1) the open-source route or 2) the route taken by scam coins like DRK. Closed source is bad idea for Crypto Projects. Period. Anoncoin should be commited first and formost to the opensource ideals that the crypto-coin community is built on. Yes there will be cloning, yes they will rip us off. What makes Anoncoin great is not first mover status but the golden seal of a genuinely superior privacy product. Maybe a copycat will displace us, it will only happen if there product is genuinely better then ours. I'm Abhorred by the prospect of sacrificing our ideals for the sake of money. That is not what this project is about. Money comes second to the purity of our coins reputation. Somebody, will inevitability say. Oh look another darkcoin.
We need to ask ourselves who does Anoncoin belong to? Do a little soul searching. Anoncoin belongs to everybody, it belongs to the traders and the miners and it even belongs to the and the haters and scammers and it even belongs to the cloners. That is the true nexus of an open-source coin.
The community will rally behind this coin. The clones will eventually fade into the background. But if we give the community a closed source implementation it will stain us in a way that will never be lived down.
No one is suggesting changing to closed source. All we are saying is that with so many copy cat devs working hard to capitalize on the work of our beloved developers, it might make sense to delay release of code until ZC is a working, proven project. This is only to be sure that nobody can steal the work of our devs before their project is finished.
This is a very big deal. This is history in the making. I very much admire the desire to stick to principles. Those principles are one of the main attractions. But others who do not share those principles, and who have already in place very good marketing, might be able to steal the thunder before the lightning even strikes.... a couple of weeks additional delay would not compromise our devs principles, but could protect all the work they have already done.
It is worth thinking about.