why aren't we, the community, regularly paying the lead developers of bitcoin?

crazy_rabbit

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RUM AND CARROTS: A PIRATE LIFE FOR ME

Quote from: molecular on September 06, 2012, 02:29:56 PM

I'd rather see people on the dev team that do that awesome work because they believe in bitcoin and are crypto-geeks at heart rather than people who code for money.

I feel the same way about the Police. Thats why I want to fire them all and only rely upon super-heros who do it solely for Truth, Justice and the American way. You don't see Superman bitching about paying his rent do you? Nope, he's got a horrible day job where he's treated like crap by his bosses and mocked on a daily basis to make ends meet, but thats the point isn't it? By making it EXTRA difficult and exhausting to be a hero for the community we make sure we don't get stuck with any of those lousy pragmatic types that give in to the realities of putting food on the table. Nope, thats what makes them SUPER HEROS.

That, and the fact they don't exist.

Wink

Bitcoin Oz

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Wat

Quote from: ?? on ??

Coming from more than a decade of open source this thread seems weird, there's been a surprisingly big gap between open and closed source mindsets for as long as I can remember though.

The bit of the title that looks most alien to me is "paying". That's alien to the whole principle of open source, put "contributing to" in there and I'd say thanks for bringing it up. Not sure if the GLBSE charity fund goes towards bitcoin development, hope so as there are some 1mhz mining bonds I've been meaning to contribute to it for a while, they don't make much but every bit counts.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/glbse-send-to-charity-92684

Currently the dividends go to the faucet , the testing project, bitcoin100 and the bounty for blockchain compression. Theres a lot of worthy bitcoin projects and not enough dividends to go round unfortunately. Im hoping the testing project comes soon to save me having to choose winners and losers in the process.

*pokes Gavin

paulie_w

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no i am saying that we should setup a fund and everyone that can contribute, should.

i don't give a fuck about the difference between miners and regular users.

dissipate

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Quote from: paulie_w on September 06, 2012, 11:42:19 PM

i'm not saying miners have to support developers, i'm saying we are literally manufacturing money with this platform, so we don't really have a problem figuring out where to get it, and we don't have to go to "businesses".

So you are saying that miners should subsidize the developers? Roll Eyes

paulie_w

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i'm not saying miners have to support developers, i'm saying we are literally manufacturing money with this platform, so we don't really have a problem figuring out where to get it, and we don't have to go to "businesses".

MatthewLM

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Since when were miners sponsoring bitcoin development?

paulie_w

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yep

molecular

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Quote from: MatthewLM on September 06, 2012, 02:32:18 PM

Quote from: paulie_w on September 06, 2012, 02:10:24 PM

why do we need business sponsorship of bitcoin when we are literally making money?

What do you mean? Who's making money for what?

he means we are mining it

MatthewLM

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Quote from: paulie_w on September 06, 2012, 02:10:24 PM

why do we need business sponsorship of bitcoin when we are literally making money?

What do you mean? Who's making money for what?

molecular

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I'd rather see people on the dev team that do that awesome work because they believe in bitcoin and are crypto-geeks at heart rather than people who code for money.

paulie_w

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another idea: paying translators.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/myanmar-bitcoins-win-win-106233

paulie_w

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why do we need business sponsorship of bitcoin when we are literally making money?

MatthewLM

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I'm putting a lot of time into cbitcoin at the moment. The motivation is not only to support bitcoin but because it leads onto some business ideas I have. Business sponsorship of bitcoin development would be one way forward.

Elwar

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Viva Ut Vivas

Who is "we" and what are the requirements to be part of "the community"?

Mike Hearn

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I agree with Steve that the right way to do this is to post assurance contracts (they don't have to be dominant) for concrete, well planned out and achievable goals.

"Assurance contract" is just a fancy term for what Kickstarter does. People make pledges. The money doesn't leave your wallet unless enough money is pledged collectively. With Bitcoin it can be done middleman-free.

The reasons this hasn't happened yet are:

Most core developers are either already able to devote a lot of time to Bitcoin, or have stable jobs that they want to keep for now.
The infrastructure for doing Bitcoin assurance contracts doesn't exist.

I suspect in future somebody will set up a company that implements highly desired features using ACs as a funding mechanism.

Fluttershy

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If the developers wanted to and were able to get Mt Gox and some of the larger mining pools on board, they could roll back the block chain to zero, claiming that since bitcoin was out of beta, they'd need to restart the whole thing. You should be polite to the devs so they don't do this.

paulie_w

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yes i think the distinction needs to be made between already operating-for-profit companies and core bitcoin TEAM or related projects.

Severian

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Quote from: bg002h on September 06, 2012, 08:22:53 AM

Perhaps we should pay magicaltux, Charlie at bitinstant, coinabul, Casascius, Matthew, etc.

You pay them by using their services or buying their products. For instance, everyone has bought some physical bitcoins from Casascius, yes?

paulie_w

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Quote from: istar on September 06, 2012, 08:32:44 AM

Quote from: repentance on September 05, 2012, 10:47:33 PM

Quote from: Daily Anarchist on September 05, 2012, 10:30:22 PM

The point I clearly didn't make is that it's no surprise that Starbucks accepts things like Square because those are just improved technologies propping up the status quo.

Bitcoin is helping to build an entirely new economic model from the ground up.

Square plans to disrupt the retail payments market. Merchant acceptance is what will bring users onboard. There's no expensive infrastructue so merchants can adopt it with little risk. It's becoming a common strategy.

Bitcoin will only ever be a niche currency until it's user-friendly - no matter how sound it is. It could be being used as a leap frog technology in developing nations right now if it wasn't so cumbersome. More user-friendly systems requiring only a smartphone already exist - Bitcoin needs to lift its game if it wants to compete in the payments market and not just be a speculative commodity until something shinier comes along.

Bitcoin creditcards? Bitcoin wallets like Bitcoinspinner for Android, super easy to use webwallets like coinbase and mywallet at blockchain.info.
Sending Bitcoins, via twitter, email, facebook...

i shouldn't speak for him/her so much, i don't think that is what was meant exactly.

we're just talking about the very first experience here. you download, you run, and what happens? how many people assume that it is broken or not working because of a simple thing like the app not explaining that the blockchain has to download first?

paulie_w

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Quote from: repentance on September 06, 2012, 01:44:11 AM

Quote from: paulie_w on September 05, 2012, 11:33:03 PM

Quote from: Gavin Andresen on September 05, 2012, 09:28:06 PM

I've said that I think the download-and-install-software-on-your-PC is a mostly-dead way of using software, and that the vast majority of people using Bitcoin in a year or three will be using it via a web application or on their smart phone. That's half of the reason why I don't think improving the UI is a high priority right now (the other half is because I think solving wallet security and backup issues is critical).

people have been saying that for years and years already. i hope it isn't true.

I think Gavin's essentially right about the future of software but has over-estimated the time-frame. People want the same kind if usability on their smartphones and tablets that they have on their laptops and PCs but they want it now, not in 2 or 3 years. People don't their computing to be tied down by location any more than they want their telephony to require physical proximity. There may be congestion issues with mobile computing at the moment, but people are still abandoning fixed internet connections in favour of mobile broadband and phone and tablet computing in droves. All many people need to make the switch total is some killer apps, and that will happen sooner rather than later.

i don't know. if what we're talking about is download-and-run vs download-and-run-in-browser, apple, google AND microsoft have shifted the game back to the latter, and it's probably going to stay that way for a good while.

(although frankly given the increasing restrictions you can almost count the app stores as 'browsers')

Topic: why aren't we, the community, regularly paying the lead developers of bitcoin? (Read 5007 times)