On 17/11/12 19:25, Mike Dupont wrote:
Interesting points here! Well if the founders of BC might stand to gain alot on the adoption of it, would it not make sense to create a FSFBT that the fsfe would stand to gain from? could the fsfe not use the same software to use as exchange? just some random ideas. mike
Microsoft or Apple could also start a p2p currency and deploy it to every end user... I just hope the free software community agrees on some solution before the big players do so.
On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 12:19 PM, Sam Liddicott sam@liddicott.com wrote:
Aye.
I think there is little reason to suppose that a group of people (mostly) united in matters of software freedom would share a common view on bitcoin.
I don't think it is the business of FSFE or FSF to make a comment on bitcoin but further getting a consensus among members may not be possible anyway.
Sam
On Nov 12, 2012 11:33 AM, "Daniel Pocock" daniel@pocock.com.au wrote:
On 12/11/12 11:17, David Gerard wrote:
I don't want to belittle your point of view - it is always good to look at any new inventions with a critical eye, especially when money is involved. But what do you see as safer alternatives to Bitcoin?
This is the politician's fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism "We must do something; This is something; Therefore, we must do this." Your question does not imply an answer of "FSFE must therefore lend its good name to Bitcoin."
Actually, I don't think that was my question at all.
To put it in context, if you were making a new physical currency, you could go to a chemist and ask him is it better to use silver or sodium. The chemist may well tell you that sodium is too soft for coins. He would likely go on to explain that it is highly reactive and likely to explode in your pocket, while silver is durable and reacts with few things. A geologist may tell you that silver is rare, also making it a good choice. Neither the chemist or geologist is telling you to invest your life savings in silver though, they are just giving scientific facts.
In the same spirit, I think that organisations concerned with free software do have some contribution to the debate, e.g. to answer questions like whether it is better to have critical technology (e.g. the payments system) built on transparency (open source and open standards). A further step may be to classify the qualities of such systems to help people distinguish the better ones, just as a geologist can tell you about the relative scarcity of gold vs silver, without actually endorsing a particular financial model or giving anything that could be perceived as investment advice.
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