vokain



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LegendaryActivity: 1750Merit: 1000 Re: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From The Exodus Address November 28, 2013, 09:38:33 PM

Last edit: November 28, 2013, 09:59:17 PM by vokain #2241 Quote from: bitexch on November 28, 2013, 09:37:37 PM Quote from: vokain on November 28, 2013, 08:31:45 PM Posting from my phone, real quickly all, I'd like to point out the current devs have already earned a substantial amount of money...likely enough to live off for at least a few months/years/decades... They do not need the extra advantage, and it is up to them how much time they wish to allocate between the rest of their lives and Mastercoin considering the future reward. I do not support an ongoing salary for them until some sort of objectives are laid out for such a salary that cannot be better accomplished via bounties.





If you think that the size of the bounties was disproportionate to the amount of work the devs did, this would indicate that the size of the bounties was not carefully enough considered. I would only point out that whether you're right or not doesn't in-itself mean that salaries are either good or bad.

If you think that the size of the bounties was disproportionate to the amount of work the devs did, this would indicate that the size of the bounties was not carefully enough considered. I would only point out that whether you're right or not doesn't in-itself mean that salaries are either good or bad.

I do not think that the size of the bounties were disproportionate to the work they did. They definitely earned it and this sort of consequence only serves to increase developer incentive.



"I would only point out that whether you're right or not doesn't in-itself mean that salaries are either good or bad."

I can agree. I want what is best for Mastercoin as well guys. I just think bounties are more effective than salaries in the case of core dev with clear criteria.

I do not think that the size of the bounties were disproportionate to the work they did. They definitely earned it and this sort of consequence only serves to increase developer incentive."I would only point out that whether you're right or not doesn't in-itself mean that salaries are either good or bad."I can agree. I want what is best for Mastercoin as well guys. I just think bounties are more effective than salaries in the case of core dev with clear criteria.

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Sr. MemberActivity: 266Merit: 250 Re: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From The Exodus Address November 28, 2013, 09:44:58 PM #2242 Quote from: vokain on November 28, 2013, 08:31:45 PM Posting from my phone, real quickly all, I'd like to point out the current devs have already earned a substantial amount of money...likely enough to live off for at least a few months/years/decades... They do not need the extra advantage, and it is up to them how much time they wish to allocate between the rest of their lives and Mastercoin considering the future reward. I do not support an ongoing salary for them until some sort of objectives are laid out for such a salary that cannot be better accomplished via bounties.



Happy Thanksgiving!



Edit: board members include

Antony Vo (me)

JR

Ron Gross

David Johnston

Brock Pierce

Sam Yilmaz

Jonathan Yantis





With the utmost of respect, I'm not aware of any developer who has earned enough to live off.



Full disclosure, I have made $6,000 fiat (from the contest, I converted BTC to dollars immediately - I'm conservative!). That's well under a months salary.



My hours contributed are probably a few hundred by now.



I also have 375 MSC rewarded, which if I cashed out would be worth quite a lot I believe at current rates? But unless I cash them out I can't use them to pay my bills & can only guess at their future value.



Not trying to be flippant but the assertion that us developers are wealthy enough already to quit full time work just isn't true.



Thanks!



With the utmost of respect, I'm not aware of any developer who has earned enough to live off.Full disclosure, I have made $6,000 fiat (from the contest, I converted BTC to dollars immediately - I'm conservative!). That's well under a months salary.My hours contributed are probably a few hundred by now.I also have 375 MSC rewarded, which if I cashed out would be worth quite a lot I believe at current rates? But unless I cash them out I can't use them to pay my bills & can only guess at their future value.Not trying to be flippant but the assertion that us developers are wealthy enough already to quit full time work just isn't true.Thanks! Smart Property & Distributed Exchange: Master Protocol for Bitcoin

vokain



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LegendaryActivity: 1750Merit: 1000 Re: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From The Exodus Address November 28, 2013, 09:50:52 PM #2244 Quote from: zathras on November 28, 2013, 09:44:58 PM Quote from: vokain on November 28, 2013, 08:31:45 PM Posting from my phone, real quickly all, I'd like to point out the current devs have already earned a substantial amount of money...likely enough to live off for at least a few months/years/decades... They do not need the extra advantage, and it is up to them how much time they wish to allocate between the rest of their lives and Mastercoin considering the future reward. I do not support an ongoing salary for them until some sort of objectives are laid out for such a salary that cannot be better accomplished via bounties.



Happy Thanksgiving!



Edit: board members include

Antony Vo (me)

JR

Ron Gross

David Johnston

Brock Pierce

Sam Yilmaz

Jonathan Yantis





With the utmost of respect, I'm not aware of any developer who has earned enough to live off.



Full disclosure, I have made $6,000 fiat (from the contest, I converted BTC to dollars immediately - I'm conservative!). That's well under a months salary.



My hours contributed are probably a few hundred by now.



I also have 375 MSC rewarded, which if I cashed out would be worth quite a lot I believe at current rates? But unless I cash them out I can't use them to pay my bills & can only guess at their future value.



Not trying to be flippant but the assertion that us developers are wealthy enough already to quit full time work just isn't true.



Thanks!





With the utmost of respect, I'm not aware of any developer who has earned enough to live off.Full disclosure, I have made $6,000 fiat (from the contest, I converted BTC to dollars immediately - I'm conservative!). That's well under a months salary.My hours contributed are probably a few hundred by now.I also have 375 MSC rewarded, which if I cashed out would be worth quite a lot I believe at current rates? But unless I cash them out I can't use them to pay my bills & can only guess at their future value.Not trying to be flippant but the assertion that us developers are wealthy enough already to quit full time work just isn't true.Thanks!

My apologies zathras, thank you for your valuable input, you have no idea know how much it is needed with these conversations! I guess I didn't consider that others did not see Bitcoin as a savings account like I do (I pull money from my coins as necessary for expenses and spending and don't worry about the price. Doing this has served me very well, and I do recommend it, though of course, I'm not a professional financial advisor. I believe this will be the majority tendency in the future).



To you, as a veteran of the process thus far, does upping the bounty size work better or worse than having a preconfirmed salary in terms of motivation and results? Not only to the person with the salary but to those without as well, the whole system.



What would you like to see My apologies zathras, thank you for your valuable input, you have no idea know how much it is needed with these conversations! I guess I didn't consider that others did not see Bitcoin as a savings account like I do (I pull money from my coins as necessary for expenses and spending and don't worry about the price. Doing this has served me very well, and I do recommend it, though of course, I'm not a professional financial advisor. I believe this will be the majority tendency in the future).To you, as a veteran of the process thus far, does upping the bounty size work better or worse than having a preconfirmed salary in terms of motivation and results? Not only to the person with the salary but to those without as well, the whole system.What would you like to see

zathras



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Sr. MemberActivity: 266Merit: 250 Re: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From The Exodus Address November 28, 2013, 10:04:17 PM #2245 Quote from: vokain on November 28, 2013, 09:50:52 PM Quote from: zathras on November 28, 2013, 09:44:58 PM Quote from: vokain on November 28, 2013, 08:31:45 PM Posting from my phone, real quickly all, I'd like to point out the current devs have already earned a substantial amount of money...likely enough to live off for at least a few months/years/decades... They do not need the extra advantage, and it is up to them how much time they wish to allocate between the rest of their lives and Mastercoin considering the future reward. I do not support an ongoing salary for them until some sort of objectives are laid out for such a salary that cannot be better accomplished via bounties.



Happy Thanksgiving!



Edit: board members include

Antony Vo (me)

JR

Ron Gross

David Johnston

Brock Pierce

Sam Yilmaz

Jonathan Yantis





With the utmost of respect, I'm not aware of any developer who has earned enough to live off.



Full disclosure, I have made $6,000 fiat (from the contest, I converted BTC to dollars immediately - I'm conservative!). That's well under a months salary.



My hours contributed are probably a few hundred by now.



I also have 375 MSC rewarded, which if I cashed out would be worth quite a lot I believe at current rates? But unless I cash them out I can't use them to pay my bills & can only guess at their future value.



Not trying to be flippant but the assertion that us developers are wealthy enough already to quit full time work just isn't true.



Thanks!





With the utmost of respect, I'm not aware of any developer who has earned enough to live off.Full disclosure, I have made $6,000 fiat (from the contest, I converted BTC to dollars immediately - I'm conservative!). That's well under a months salary.My hours contributed are probably a few hundred by now.I also have 375 MSC rewarded, which if I cashed out would be worth quite a lot I believe at current rates? But unless I cash them out I can't use them to pay my bills & can only guess at their future value.Not trying to be flippant but the assertion that us developers are wealthy enough already to quit full time work just isn't true.Thanks!

My apologies zathras, thank you for your valuable input, you have no idea know how much it is needed with these conversations! I guess I didn't consider that others did not see Bitcoin as a savings account like I do (I pull money from my coins as necessary for expenses and spending and don't worry about the price. Doing this has served me very well, and I do recommend it, though of course, I'm not a professional financial advisor. I believe this will be the majority tendency in the future).



To you, as a veteran of the process thus far, does upping the bounty size work better or worse than having a preconfirmed salary in terms of motivation and results? Not only to the person with the salary but to those without as well, the whole system.



What would you like to see

My apologies zathras, thank you for your valuable input, you have no idea know how much it is needed with these conversations! I guess I didn't consider that others did not see Bitcoin as a savings account like I do (I pull money from my coins as necessary for expenses and spending and don't worry about the price. Doing this has served me very well, and I do recommend it, though of course, I'm not a professional financial advisor. I believe this will be the majority tendency in the future).To you, as a veteran of the process thus far, does upping the bounty size work better or worse than having a preconfirmed salary in terms of motivation and results? Not only to the person with the salary but to those without as well, the whole system.What would you like to see

No apologies necessary at all . It's a difficult topic with lots of differing views.



There are ongoing discussions in the Dev mailing list on how we can make devs spending more time on the project a reality - have you seen those?



Thanks



No apologies necessary at all. It's a difficult topic with lots of differing views.There are ongoing discussions in the Dev mailing list on how we can make devs spending more time on the project a reality - have you seen those?Thanks Smart Property & Distributed Exchange: Master Protocol for Bitcoin

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LegendaryActivity: 1750Merit: 1000 Re: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From The Exodus Address November 28, 2013, 10:27:04 PM #2246 Quote from: zathras link=topic=265488.msg3758172#msg3758172 . It's a difficult topic with lots of differing views.



There are ongoing discussions in the Dev mailing list on how we can make devs spending more time on the project a reality - have you seen those?



Thanks



No apologies necessary at all. It's a difficult topic with lots of differing views.There are ongoing discussions in the Dev mailing list on how we can make devs spending more time on the project a reality - have you seen those?Thanks

No...embarrassingly enough I am not on that list. I just requested Aric to add me, hopefully I can see the previous messages. No...embarrassingly enough I am not on that list. I just requested Aric to add me, hopefully I can see the previous messages.

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Hero MemberActivity: 714Merit: 500 Re: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From The Exodus Address November 28, 2013, 10:53:21 PM

Last edit: November 28, 2013, 11:21:29 PM by Luckybit #2247 Quote from: vokain on November 28, 2013, 07:59:27 AM Why can't we do it in the same spirit as the first contest? Objectives laid out, prize is there, and developers are allowed to form coalitions as they liked. I like to think that coin distribution within the one partnership that the contest had (I forgot who) worked out fairly, as well as to the full body of the contestants. Let's let the contestants decide what's more important, their day job or a fixed bounty that rises day by day for creating a truly awesome life changing tech? It works because it's a race to claim the greater piece of the pie!



Discussion please!



Edit: tl;dr I think that for most objectives, core development wise, it is better to pay upon satisfactory completion vs paying up front.



I think full time developers are necessary. Contests can only work for so long. Look at the Linux development mailing list. You need between 5-10 full time developers and the money exists to easily hire them so why not? That does not mean they should be employees. Pay them in Bitcoin and give them tasks that suit full time development such as debugging, security oriented, the graphical user interface, quality assurance, and more.



Don't do it in the typical way. Hire only the developers who accept being paid in Mastercoins. If they won't accept being paid in Mastercoins they shouldn't be full time developers for the Mastercoin protocol. Reserve that for the people who truly believe in what Mastercoin will be. For developers who do not have enough money to pay bills through the month and if they are truly skilled and proven then they should take place in the bounties to earn a spot as a full time developer. What I think would be a bad idea would be to bring in developers who are not a part of the Bitcoin community, or the Mastercoin community, and give them the most privileged position of full time developer. It's not just about the developer having skill but these are people who have to be trusted.



Also have a look at Ciyam and see if it can solve some of these problems.

http://ciyam.org/open/

Example:

http://ciyam.org/open/?cmd=view&data=20121221072815393000&ident=M100V137&chksum=45c95736 I think full time developers are necessary. Contests can only work for so long. Look at the Linux development mailing list. You need between 5-10 full time developers and the money exists to easily hire them so why not? That does not mean they should be employees. Pay them in Bitcoin and give them tasks that suit full time development such as debugging, security oriented, the graphical user interface, quality assurance, and more.Don't do it in the typical way. Hire only the developers who accept being paid in Mastercoins. If they won't accept being paid in Mastercoins they shouldn't be full time developers for the Mastercoin protocol. Reserve that for the people who truly believe in what Mastercoin will be. For developers who do not have enough money to pay bills through the month and if they are truly skilled and proven then they should take place in the bounties to earn a spot as a full time developer. What I think would be a bad idea would be to bring in developers who are not a part of the Bitcoin community, or the Mastercoin community, and give them the most privileged position of full time developer. It's not just about the developer having skill but these are people who have to be trusted.Also have a look at Ciyam and see if it can solve some of these problems.Example:

Luckybit



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Hero MemberActivity: 714Merit: 500 Re: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From The Exodus Address November 28, 2013, 10:57:32 PM

Last edit: November 28, 2013, 11:16:33 PM by Luckybit #2248 Quote from: vokain on November 28, 2013, 08:16:13 AM Quote from: W2014 on November 28, 2013, 08:08:44 AM The next 6 months are critical. I believe a project manager is needed, someone with technical knowledge and management skills, who can hire and motivate the right people. A lot is at stake and the existing resources should be deployed intelligently and narrowly (i.e., not to fund every idea, but to use the bulk on the fundamentals) to hire the very best people to lead this project. Success at an early stage will create valuable dev MSCs that can fund the project for years going forward. The board needs to take decisive action to get the right people working on this project full time.



For open-ended ongoing tasks like this, I believe what David proposed could be effective, to have x percentage of the new coins released in some length of time. To keep on receiving the flow of funds one must do a satisfactory enough job to the community to justify keeping someone on. Open communication in this case will be vital.

Edit2: I have rethought my position. See my post in the poll, I do not believe this is a good way of evaluating worth of work without clear objectives, and even harder to evaluate the worth of x PERCENTAGE of MSC in l time interval.



Edit: at the same time, do we need a project manager? I'd like to ask the current developers their thoughts. Do self-organizing teams need/benefit from a top-down type of manager to get clear-cut objectives completed? I like to think that we just need the element of competition for truly grand prizes to speed things up fastest. If a manager indeed would help development, I would imagine a good manager would offer up their talents to a dev talent pool and put together a team. Bounties split as they're earned and as the team likes.



Again, thoughts?

Edit2: I have rethought my position. See my post in the poll, I do not believe this is a good way of evaluating worth of work without clear objectives, and even harder to evaluate the worth of xof MSC in l time interval.Edit: at the same time, do we need a project manager? I'd like to ask the current developers their thoughts. Do self-organizing teams need/benefit from a top-down type of manager to get clear-cut objectives completed? I like to think that we just need the element of competition for truly grand prizes to speed things up fastest. If a manager indeed would help development, I would imagine a good manager would offer up their talents to a dev talent pool and put together a team. Bounties split as they're earned and as the team likes.Again, thoughts?

Competition isn't everything. At some point you need cooperation between developers and contests don't really help people to cooperate. What you need to do is pay development teams. Assign certain developers to a team and pay them all as they build something together.



So if a feature gets built by a team of 5 developers then team panther for instance should get paid as a group. Also you need to rely on collaborative software other than these forums to allow developers to collaborate and deal with bugs.



So my advice is to form development teams and give each team a code name. Give each team a particular area of focus and make each team select a team leader. So if one team is working on smart properties and another team is working on stocks and another the user currencies now you have three teams working on important features.



The team leaders from each team should be in communication with each other and should manage collaboration between the teams. The team leader should give a weekly report on the progress on the forum and give daily progress reports to the other teams via email. Use contests for purposes like smaller less critical features, experimental features, bug testing, or bug reporting. Competition isn't everything. At some point you need cooperation between developers and contests don't really help people to cooperate. What you need to do is pay development teams. Assign certain developers to a team and pay them all as they build something together.So if a feature gets built by a team of 5 developers then team panther for instance should get paid as a group. Also you need to rely on collaborative software other than these forums to allow developers to collaborate and deal with bugs.So my advice is to form development teams and give each team a code name. Give each team a particular area of focus and make each team select a team leader. So if one team is working on smart properties and another team is working on stocks and another the user currencies now you have three teams working on important features.The team leaders from each team should be in communication with each other and should manage collaboration between the teams. The team leader should give a weekly report on the progress on the forum and give daily progress reports to the other teams via email. Use contests for purposes like smaller less critical features, experimental features, bug testing, or bug reporting.

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LegendaryActivity: 1750Merit: 1000 Re: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From The Exodus Address November 28, 2013, 11:26:00 PM

Last edit: November 28, 2013, 11:40:24 PM by vokain #2249 Quote from: Luckybit on November 28, 2013, 10:57:32 PM Competition isn't everything. At some point you need cooperation between developers and contests don't really help people to cooperate. What you need to do is pay development teams. Assign certain developers to a team and pay them all as they build something together.



So if a feature gets built by a team of 5 developers then team panther for instance should get paid as a group. Also you need to rely on software other than these forums to allow developers to collaborate and deal with bugs. Git might work but you need a development mailing list as well at least.



There has been and will be cooperation. Why do we need to pay individuals salaries and hope they "cooperate" as if they weren't already? If there's already the incentive to work together, distribute strengths as necessary, and efficiently organize roles in order to solve the problem at hand and secure the prize? The detriment of the salary is that when you have an official salaried "development team," it presents the idea that we already have the developers we need and we just need to wait and let them do work now that they are paid a salary. This is not conducive towards attracting new and possibly better talent!







additional thoughts:



quote from board emails:

Quote Do you think that is fair? If you were a hopeful contestant and wanted to dedicate your skills towards a decentralized project?

Now, weigh that with its effectiveness. I think coalitions are great if the best developers we had right now got to call the shots on development, along with the freedom to not worry about their other financial obligations as much. Is there a way to encourage self-organizing coalitions so that we may still upkeep our promise of decentralization?



I assume guys like Tachikoma will naturally end up leading such endeavours anyways. It just may be better to keep up with decentralization and perhaps this subtle difference in mechanism could mean a lot down the road, motivation and incentive-wise and all that.

quotes from earlier:



Quote Why can't we do it in the same spirit as the first contest? Objectives laid out, prize is there, and developers are allowed to form coalitions as they liked. I like to think that coin distribution within the one partnership that the contest had (I forgot who) worked out fairly, as well as to the full body of the contestants Quote I like to think that we just need the element of competition for truly grand prizes to speed things up fastest. If a manager indeed would help development, I would imagine a good manager would offer up their talents to a dev talent pool and put together a team. Bounties split as they're earned and as the team likes. Quote Yes, cryptocurrency has convicted me strongly of competition. Competition creates some crazy crazy innovations and brings the best people together. Already confirmed rewards (salaries) kind of go against that. Did the DARPA Grand Challenge reward anyone before the contest? Once the contestants have proven themselves, they receive the bounty which enables them to spend more TIME on such projects. The best and fairest way to encourage further dev is by providing further incentive for development of objectives with very clear criteria, ie bounties. There has been and will be cooperation. Why do we need to pay individuals salaries and hope they "cooperate" as if they weren't already? If there's already the incentive to work together, distribute strengths as necessary, and efficiently organize roles in order to solve the problem at hand and secure the prize? The detriment of the salary is that when you have an official salaried "development team," it presents the idea that we already have the developers we need and we just need to wait and let them do work now that they are paid a salary. This is not conducive towards attracting new and possibly better talent!additional thoughts:quote from board emails:quotes from earlier:

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MemberActivity: 70Merit: 10 Re: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From The Exodus Address November 28, 2013, 11:48:51 PM #2250 Quote from: vokain on November 28, 2013, 11:26:00 PM

There has been and will be cooperation. Why do we need to pay individuals salaries and hope they "cooperate" as if they weren't already? If there's already the incentive to work together, distribute strengths as necessary, and efficiently organize roles in order to solve the problem at hand and secure the prize? The detriment of the salary is that when you have an official salaried "development team," it presents the idea that we already have the developers we need and we just need to wait and let them do work now that they are paid a salary. This is not conducive towards attracting new and possibly better talent!



vokain, you seem to be making two different points: (1) that salaried developers will hard to find, because of the political and managerial duties that come with a salary; (2) salaried developers are bad for the development for the project. I think it's important to state these two points separately. I have tried to respond to (1) in a previous posting, what are your thoughts?



Regarding (2): If I understand you correctly, you are worried that by having a pre-established team of salaried workers, we'll be scaring away talent that is not salaried. But one could easily apply this same argument to bounties: by only providing bounties, and not a real salary, we are scaring away developers who are looking for a longer-term commitment and job security. I not only think this is possible, but even quite likely!



No one is saying we shouldn't have bounties *on top of* salaried positions. What the community is rejecting is the much more inflexible idea of having bounties *instead of* salaried positions.



There is always the possibility that one is missing out on talent. The problem is that while trying to account for every potentially missed opportunity, you may hurt the project. I believe that right now Mastercoin is being hurt by not having both salaried developers as well as bounties. vokain, you seem to be making two different points: (1) that salaried developers will hard to find, because of the political and managerial duties that come with a salary; (2) salaried developers are bad for the development for the project. I think it's important to state these two points separately. I have tried to respond to (1) in a previous posting, what are your thoughts?Regarding (2): If I understand you correctly, you are worried that by having a pre-established team of salaried workers, we'll be scaring away talent that is not salaried. But one could easily apply this same argument to bounties: by only providing bounties, and not a real salary, we are scaring away developers who are looking for a longer-term commitment and job security. I not only think this is possible, but even quite likely!No one is saying we shouldn't have bounties *on top of* salaried positions. What the community is rejecting is the much more inflexible idea of having bounties *instead of* salaried positions.There is always the possibility that one is missing out on talent. The problem is that while trying to account for every potentially missed opportunity, you may hurt the project. I believe that right now Mastercoin is being hurt by not having both salaried developers as well as bounties.

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LegendaryActivity: 1750Merit: 1000 Re: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From The Exodus Address November 29, 2013, 12:02:31 AM #2251 Quote from: bitexch on November 28, 2013, 11:48:51 PM Quote from: vokain on November 28, 2013, 11:26:00 PM

There has been and will be cooperation. Why do we need to pay individuals salaries and hope they "cooperate" as if they weren't already? If there's already the incentive to work together, distribute strengths as necessary, and efficiently organize roles in order to solve the problem at hand and secure the prize? The detriment of the salary is that when you have an official salaried "development team," it presents the idea that we already have the developers we need and we just need to wait and let them do work now that they are paid a salary. This is not conducive towards attracting new and possibly better talent!



vokain, you seem to be making two different points: (1) that salaried developers will hard to find, because of the political and managerial duties that come with a salary; (2) salaried developers are bad for the development for the project. I think it's important to state these two points separately. I have tried to respond to (1) in a previous posting, what are your thoughts?



Regarding (2): If I understand you correctly, you are worried that by having a pre-established team of salaried workers, we'll be scaring away talent that is not salaried. But one could easily apply this same argument to bounties: by only providing bounties, and not a real salary, we are scaring away developers who are looking for a longer-term commitment and job security. I not only think this is possible, but even quite likely!



No one is saying we shouldn't have bounties *on top of* salaried positions. What the community is rejecting is the much more inflexible idea of having bounties *instead of* salaried positions.



There is always the possibility that one is missing out on talent. The problem is that while trying to account for every potentially missed opportunity, you may hurt the project. I believe that right now Mastercoin is being hurt by not having both salaried developers as well as bounties.

vokain, you seem to be making two different points: (1) that salaried developers will hard to find, because of the political and managerial duties that come with a salary; (2) salaried developers are bad for the development for the project. I think it's important to state these two points separately. I have tried to respond to (1) in a previous posting, what are your thoughts?Regarding (2): If I understand you correctly, you are worried that by having a pre-established team of salaried workers, we'll be scaring away talent that is not salaried. But one could easily apply this same argument to bounties: by only providing bounties, and not a real salary, we are scaring away developers who are looking for a longer-term commitment and job security. I not only think this is possible, but even quite likely!No one is saying we shouldn't have bounties *on top of* salaried positions. What the community is rejecting is the much more inflexible idea of having bounties *instead of* salaried positions.There is always the possibility that one is missing out on talent. The problem is that while trying to account for every potentially missed opportunity, you may hurt the project. I believe that right now Mastercoin is being hurt by not having both salaried developers as well as bounties.

1) I'm not saying that salaried devs will be hard to find that will utilize political and managerial duties, it's just that I feel that many of the current devs we have prefer to stay out of politics if they can avoid it. in my "additional thoughts" quote one post above, I said that if a manager would actually turn out to be useful, I would hope they would offer their managerial talents to the devs and they can figure it out from there. Sort of like how a band and band manager works, they know best what is fair within a team. This would work under the current bounty system, especially when it is presented that there is a huge prize available.



2) I think that is up for the person who has to make the choice of deciding between longer-term commitment and the possible awesome rewards at this end of the rainbow. You posit we scare away developers because we don't offer salaries. How do we even justify giving a newcomer a salary if they have had nothing to show for it before? Again, for the third fourth time, unearned windfall. It's a risk that is made irrelevant when we have bounties for clear-cut criteria, which is true for developing the spec implementation.





This is an excerpt from one private email, as a response to JR when he asked the devs what it would take to have them on as full hires:

Quote Have you put any thought around how you might actually structure these hires? How would they (we) be managed? How would you measure performance (ie is the intention to set KPIs or similar)? Informal or formally contracted? Would specific work packages be issued to developers under say for example a project management methodology like Prince2 or would developers be free to structure their contributions as they deem appropriate as per current?



Same on the funding front - how do you intend to make payment? On a weekly/monthly basis or per deliverable/specific goal? Will 'paid' developers still be be eligible to to claim bounties? At a full or reduced rate?

It echoes what I have been thinking with even more specificity. Salaries add unnecessary complexity and questions to be answered that you do not have with bounties.



1) I'm not saying that salaried devs will be hard to find that will utilize political and managerial duties, it's just that I feel that many of the current devs we have prefer to stay out of politics if they can avoid it. in my "additional thoughts" quote one post above, I said that if a manager would actually turn out to be useful, I would hope they would offer their managerial talents to the devs and they can figure it out from there. Sort of like how a band and band manager works, they know best what is fair within a team. This would work under the current bounty system, especially when it is presented that there is a huge prize available.2) I think that is up for the person who has to make the choice of deciding between longer-term commitment and the possible awesome rewards at this end of the rainbow. You posit we scare away developers because we don't offer salaries. How do we even justify giving a newcomer a salary if they have had nothing to show for it before? Again, for thefourth time, unearned windfall. It's a risk that is made irrelevant when we have bounties for clear-cut criteria, which is true for developing the spec implementation.This is an excerpt from one private email, as a response to JR when he asked the devs what it would take to have them on as full hires:It echoes what I have been thinking with even more specificity. Salaries add unnecessary complexity and questions to be answered that you do not have with bounties.

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Hero MemberActivity: 714Merit: 500 Re: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From The Exodus Address November 29, 2013, 12:04:36 AM #2252 Quote from: vokain on November 28, 2013, 11:26:00 PM There has been and will be cooperation. Why do we need to pay individuals salaries and hope they "cooperate" as if they weren't already? I don't see any organized development teams. I don't see cooperation. I see different developers all working on stuff and I cannot keep up with who is doing what or what progress is. For a project as big as this you need daily reports among developers and weekly reports to the community. We have a blog which provides some of that but it's not detailed. We don't get to see for instance a daily changelog with comments. If there is a bug that a particular developer is having a problem with is there a bugzilla or some other similar type of setup so we can see the outstanding bugs?



Quote from: vokain on November 28, 2013, 11:26:00 PM If there's already the incentive to work together, distribute strengths as necessary, and efficiently organize roles in order to solve the problem at hand and secure the prize?

It's not about the prizes. The prizes are just incentives to motivate people to get involved in the process. It's actually about building the best possible Mastercoin protocol that can be built. This protocol has to be something which can allow many businesses and developers to build on top of it. Think of the Mastercoin development team as being as important as the Mozilla development team or the Chrome or Linux development team. Those teams aren't organized around a web forum using bounties, they all have a combination of salaried developers paid by sponsors or volunteers. Study successful projects to find the right combination but from what I have seen there is a role for full time salaried developers.



Quote from: vokain on November 28, 2013, 11:26:00 PM The detriment of the salary is that when you have an official salaried "development team," it presents the idea that we already have the developers we need and we just need to wait and let them do work now that they are paid a salary. This is not conducive towards attracting new and possibly better talent! I don't get that idea at all. The Mastercoin project is so vast that even if you had 5 teams of 5 full time developers you'd still have so many trivial or experimental features to implement that you'd have room for bounties.



For example reputation should be built on top of the Mastercoin protocol and the core developers shouldn't be concerned with building reputation functionality. The core developers shouldn't have to be focused on little details of the user interface. The core developers should be doing the really difficult stuff that the rest of us cannot do. It should be highly specialized experts working on features which are truly hard and which require 12 hour days of contemplating, designing, coding, and bug testing. If you understand what is involved you'll know it's not something that can be considered part time work and it's not really bounty work. You cannot work on a bunch of other projects or have a full time job and do this on the side, you should be doing this full time and give total effort to it that it deserves.



Quote from: vokain on November 28, 2013, 11:26:00 PM



quote from board emails:

Quote Do you think that is fair? If you were a hopeful contestant and wanted to dedicate your skills towards a decentralized project?

Now, weigh that with its effectiveness. I think coalitions are great if the best developers we had right now got to call the shots on development, along with the freedom to not worry about their other financial obligations as much. Is there a way to encourage self-organizing coalitions so that we may still upkeep our promise of decentralization?

Decentralization makes sense, but you still need structure for development teams. You need a team leader, you need names for each team, you need focuses and objectives for each team and specialists.



Quote from: vokain on November 28, 2013, 11:26:00 PM I assume guys like Tachikoma will naturally end up leading such endeavours anyways. It just may be better to keep up with decentralization and perhaps this subtle difference in mechanism could mean a lot down the road, motivation and incentive-wise and all that. additional thoughts:quote from board emails:Decentralization makes sense, but you still need structure for development teams. You need a team leader, you need names for each team, you need focuses and objectives for each team and specialists.



I think you need team leaders so that when new people join in they can go and ask that person how stuff works, how the design should be, how the code should look, and what needs to be fixed. It's just in my opinion a bad idea to be decentralized and unorganized. You can be decentralized and fully organized.

I don't see any organized development teams. I don't see cooperation. I see different developers all working on stuff and I cannot keep up with who is doing what or what progress is. For a project as big as this you need daily reports among developers and weekly reports to the community. We have a blog which provides some of that but it's not detailed. We don't get to see for instance a daily changelog with comments. If there is a bug that a particular developer is having a problem with is there a bugzilla or some other similar type of setup so we can see the outstanding bugs?It's not about the prizes. The prizes are just incentives to motivate people to get involved in the process. It's actually about building the best possible Mastercoin protocol that can be built. This protocol has to be something which can allow many businesses and developers to build on top of it. Think of the Mastercoin development team as being as important as the Mozilla development team or the Chrome or Linux development team. Those teams aren't organized around a web forum using bounties, they all have a combination of salaried developers paid by sponsors or volunteers. Study successful projects to find the right combination but from what I have seen there is a role for full time salaried developers.I don't get that idea at all. The Mastercoin project is so vast that even if you had 5 teams of 5 full time developers you'd still have so many trivial or experimental features to implement that you'd have room for bounties.For example reputation should be built on top of the Mastercoin protocol and the core developers shouldn't be concerned with building reputation functionality. The core developers shouldn't have to be focused on little details of the user interface. The core developers should be doing the really difficult stuff that the rest of us cannot do. It should be highly specialized experts working on features which are truly hard and which require 12 hour days of contemplating, designing, coding, and bug testing. If you understand what is involved you'll know it's not something that can be considered part time work and it's not really bounty work. You cannot work on a bunch of other projects or have a full time job and do this on the side, you should be doing this full time and give total effort to it that it deserves.Tachikoma knows a lot about the Mastercoin protocol as it currently is and on the parts he is working on. He cannot be expected to focus on every aspect. He probably should be team leader for the part he is working on, but what about all the other parts of the protocol spec left to be implemented?I think you need team leaders so that when new people join in they can go and ask that person how stuff works, how the design should be, how the code should look, and what needs to be fixed. It's just in my opinion a bad idea to be decentralized and unorganized. You can be decentralized and fully organized.

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MemberActivity: 70Merit: 10 Re: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From The Exodus Address November 29, 2013, 12:23:25 AM #2253 Quote from: vokain on November 29, 2013, 12:02:31 AM

2) I think that is up for the person who has to make the choice of deciding between longer-term commitment and the possible awesome rewards at this end of the rainbow.



You're obviously holding a double standard: why does the burden of responsibility fall on someone who wants to make a longer-term commitment, but the person who works for a bounty is blameless? Your personal prejudices are starting to show through.



Quote You posit we scare away developers because we don't offer salaries. How do we even justify giving a newcomer a salary if they have had nothing to show for it before?



When someone applies for a full-time job, he most likely will submit a resume, demonstrating his experience, his skills, etc.. Are you suggesting that a resume is worthless? If the system of hiring full-time employees based on their previous experience were as uncertain and hare-brained as you make it out to be, then one would think that companies which follow such a procedure would face catastrophic results all the time!



Your counter-argument has nothing to do with whether we scare away developers. You have failed to actually engage with that point.



Quote

It's a risk that is made irrelevant when we have bounties for clear-cut criteria, which is true for developing the spec implementation.



Your attitude seems inconsistent: you want to avoid the risk of missing out on talent by not hiring full time developers, but you don't want to avoid the risk of missing out on talent by only offering bounties. It would be good if you could explain how you reconcile this contradiction.



Quote

Salaries add unnecessary complexity and questions to be answered that you do not have with bounties.



That salaries add complexity doesn't mean that that complexity is unnecessary. Indeed, it is disconcerting to see that a member of the board would let the simplicity of one option determine his opinion so completely, when it has been argued that the simple option gravely endangers the project. You're obviously holding a double standard: why does the burden of responsibility fall on someone who wants to make a longer-term commitment, but the person who works for a bounty is blameless? Your personal prejudices are starting to show through.When someone applies for a full-time job, he most likely will submit a resume, demonstrating his experience, his skills, etc.. Are you suggesting that a resume is worthless? If the system of hiring full-time employees based on their previous experience were as uncertain and hare-brained as you make it out to be, then one would think that companies which follow such a procedure would face catastrophic results all the time!Your counter-argument has nothing to do with whether we scare away developers. You have failed to actually engage with that point.Your attitude seems inconsistent: you want to avoid the risk of missing out on talent by not hiring full time developers, but you don't want to avoid the risk of missing out on talent by only offering bounties. It would be good if you could explain how you reconcile this contradiction.That salaries add complexity doesn't mean that that complexity is unnecessary. Indeed, it is disconcerting to see that a member of the board would let the simplicity of one option determine his opinion so completely, when it has been argued that the simple option gravely endangers the project.

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LegendaryActivity: 1358Merit: 1002Ron Gross Re: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From The Exodus Address November 29, 2013, 01:01:28 AM #2256

We need better forum software and we need it now.

I say skip the votes, let's move to Discourse, from what I hear they are world class (I haven't checked this myself, but I have tremendous respect for their team so I want to do a pilot with them).



Here is an email I just sent them. If anyone knows people on the Discourse team, please help me push this ASAP.





Whoa, after reading this I realize I use "you guys" way too much ... oh well.



Quote



We at Mastercoin (Bitcoin related startup) have a super burning need for Diaspora, we have lots of cash and clout, and we want to partner with you guys ASAP. Let's setup a meeting to discuss (please put something on my calendar at meetme.so/RonGross).







Hi all,



I hope you guys are following the Bitcoin craze.



1.

We at Mastercoin are one of the Bitcoin startup right now.

We are so young and I don't have a lot of raw data to convince you of this claim yet, but if you know anyone within the Bitcoin ecosystem (e.g. in Bitangels), just ask them.



Just for reference here is our Google Analytics stats. We just started measuring them about 2 weeks ago.







Also FYI we have the equivalent of about 20,000 bitcoins = 20,000,000 USD in our budget ... and we just started this crazy project 3-4 months ago!!!





2. To understand what Mastercoin is, the best thing would be to setup a skype call with me via meetme.so/RonGross. In the meantime, you can read our FAQ and watch this presentation. I'll be happy to walk you through that in person.



3. We need you guys!



We are conducting most of our talks on a single thread in bitcointalk, the main Bitcoin forum. This is the most viewed thread in the Project Development forum of bitcointalk over the last 3 months.



As Executive Director, it has become impossible for me to engage my community because there is so much stuff going on, and the capabilities of the forum software for bitcointalk are so primitive.



I would like to proceed with Discourse immediately.



If you would help us setup up as a managed installation and officially become your 3rd partner. I think it would benefit both parties a lot. The pace I like to move is blazing fast.



Please set up the appropriate calls with me to find out more.



High Regards (I just love you guys, especially Jeff and Stack Overflow),

TL;DRWe at Mastercoin (Bitcoin related startup) have a super burning need for Diaspora, we have lots of cash and clout, and we want to partner with you guys ASAP. Let's setup a meeting to discuss (please put something on my calendar at meetme.so/RonGross).Hi all,I hope you guys are following the Bitcoin craze.1.We at Mastercoin are one of the Bitcoin startup right now.We are so young and I don't have a lot of raw data to convince you of this claim yet, but if you know anyone within the Bitcoin ecosystem (e.g. in Bitangels), just ask them.Just for reference here is our Google Analytics stats. We just started measuring them about 2 weeks ago.Also FYI we have the equivalent of about 20,000 bitcoins = 20,000,000 USD in our budget ... and we just started this crazy project 3-4 months ago!!!2. To understand what Mastercoin is, the best thing would be to setup a skype call with me via meetme.so/RonGross. In the meantime, you can read our FAQ and watch this presentation. I'll be happy to walk you through that in person.3. We need you guys!We are conducting most of our talks on a single thread in bitcointalk, the main Bitcoin forum. This is the most viewed thread in the Project Development forum of bitcointalk over the last 3 months.As Executive Director, it has become impossible for me to engage my community because there is so much stuff going on, and the capabilities of the forum software for bitcointalk are so primitive.I would like to proceed with Discourse immediately.If you would help us setup up as a managed installation and officially become your 3rd partner. I think it would benefit both parties a lot. The pace I like to move is blazing fast.Please set up the appropriate calls with me to find out more.High Regards (I just love you guys, especially Jeff and Stack Overflow), Guys, this forum thread and bitcointalk is not just driving me crazy, it is not productive.We need better forum software and we need it now.I say skip the votes, let's move to Discourse, from what I hear they are world class (I haven't checked this myself, but I have tremendous respect for their team so I want to do a pilot with them).Here is an email I just sent them.Whoa, after reading this I realize I use "you guys" way too much ... oh well.

Executive Director

Co-founder of the Israeli Bitcoin Association Please do not pm me, use ron@bitcoin.org.il instead Mastercoin Executive DirectorCo-founder of the Israeli Bitcoin Association

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MemberActivity: 70Merit: 10 Re: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From The Exodus Address November 29, 2013, 01:03:35 AM #2257 Quote from: ripper234 on November 29, 2013, 12:41:07 AM Quote from: bitexch on November 28, 2013, 11:09:44 AM

Many people have said that they think it is imperative for JR to be on the project full-time, yet I have not seen anyone provide a reason as to why his full-time commitment to Mastercoin is necessary. Presumably the community feels that since JR conceived Mastercoin it follows that its development is dependent on him. But it's one thing to conceive an idea and it's another thing to develop it. Does anyone have reason to believe the JR would be such an exceptionally good developer? Are we really so sure it would be impossible to find a developer of comparable skill?



I find the community's attitude towards JR untenable, and I partially blame JR for not being more direct with the community: either he believes his full-time help is necessary for the development of Mastercoin, in which case, if the community and the board agree, we should do what we can to get him on board full-time. If on the other hand JR doesn't think his full-time commitment to Mastercoin is necessary for development, he ought to say so explicitly, that way we can stop focusing on how to get him to commit to the project, and start focusing on the project itself!



In my opinion, JR obviously doesn't think his full-time commitment to the project is necessary for its success, otherwise, he wouldn't have published his white paper without any code, and wouldn't have explicitly said that for two years he tried to convince someone else to undertake this project.



I believe that J.R is currently one of the bottlenecks for this project.

Being the founder and a key board member, his input and vote is needed on a lot of issues, and we simply don't get enough J.R time right now.



I hope to be able to persuade him to change that and help us to maintain and increase our acceleration.

I believe that J.R is currently one of the bottlenecks for this project.Being the founder and a key board member, his input and vote is needed on a lot of issues, and we simply don't get enough J.R time right now.I hope to be able to persuade him to change that and help us to maintain and increase our acceleration.

As I have already argued, I don't think that JR is instrumental to the development of the project because he founded it. If you disagree, please explain why.



If JR doesn't have enough time to give his input and votes, then he shouldn't be a board member. If someone isn't able to fulfill the duties of his position, he shouldn't have that position. Is JR an exception?

As I have already argued, I don't think that JR is instrumental to the development of the project because he founded it. If you disagree, please explain why.If JR doesn't have enough time to give his input and votes, then he shouldn't be a board member. If someone isn't able to fulfill the duties of his position, he shouldn't have that position. Is JR an exception?

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LegendaryActivity: 1358Merit: 1002Ron Gross Re: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From The Exodus Address November 29, 2013, 01:11:52 AM #2258 Quote from: bitexch on November 29, 2013, 01:03:35 AM As I have already argued, I don't think that JR is instrumental to the development of the project because he founded it. If you disagree, please explain why.



If JR doesn't have enough time to give his input and votes, then he shouldn't be a board member. If someone isn't able to fulfill the duties of his position, he shouldn't have that position. Is JR an exception?



The project can progress without JR.

However the project will move much faster with full support from JR.

This is for a few reasons:



1. He owns a lot of MSC, and carries a lot of weight. Many people look to him. So unless he supports a particular hire, feature or project, it is bound to be delayed. (I want his relative weight to decrease in order to remove him as a single point of failure in the project. Selling some MSC now would be a great start).



2. JR is a board member and he definitely should remain one. He is working on freeing up his time, and is already dedicating more time and effort than some of the other board members. "Kicking JR out of his project" is so off the table that it's in the barn with the dogs. Won't happen.



3. We never formalized the expectations from board members, but we are all busy people. Try not to judge.

Board members need to either: be available for discussion, or work to reducing the project's dependencies on them. I am pushing for both.



4. It's holidays... please be patient for a bit. I'm pushing this super hard, give me a chance to do what I do. Thanks! The project can progress without JR.However the project will move much faster with full support from JR.This is for a few reasons:1. He owns a lot of MSC, and carries a lot of weight. Many people look to him. So unless he supports a particular hire, feature or project, it is bound to be delayed. (I want his relative weight to decrease in order to remove him as a single point of failure in the project. Selling some MSC now would be a great start).2. JR is a board member and he definitely should remain one. He is working on freeing up his time, and is already dedicating more time and effort than some of the other board members. "Kicking JR out of his project" is so off the table that it's in the barn with the dogs. Won't happen.3. We never formalized the expectations from board members, but we are all busy people. Try not to judge.Board members need to either: be available for discussion, or work to reducing the project's dependencies on them. I am pushing for both.4. It's holidays... please be patient for a bit. I'm pushing this super hard, give me a chance to do what I do. Thanks!

Executive Director

Co-founder of the Israeli Bitcoin Association Please do not pm me, use ron@bitcoin.org.il instead Mastercoin Executive DirectorCo-founder of the Israeli Bitcoin Association

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Sr. MemberActivity: 462Merit: 250 Re: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From The Exodus Address November 29, 2013, 01:12:50 AM #2259 Quote from: vokain on November 28, 2013, 10:27:04 PM Quote from: zathras link=topic=265488.msg3758172#msg3758172 . It's a difficult topic with lots of differing views.



There are ongoing discussions in the Dev mailing list on how we can make devs spending more time on the project a reality - have you seen those?



Thanks



No apologies necessary at all. It's a difficult topic with lots of differing views.There are ongoing discussions in the Dev mailing list on how we can make devs spending more time on the project a reality - have you seen those?Thanks

No...embarrassingly enough I am not on that list. I just requested Aric to add me, hopefully I can see the previous messages.

No...embarrassingly enough I am not on that list. I just requested Aric to add me, hopefully I can see the previous messages.

Since I'm developing for mastercoin as well, can I get added too? Is there a way for others who are interested in mastercoin development to be added as well? Since I'm developing for mastercoin as well, can I get added too? Is there a way for others who are interested in mastercoin development to be added as well?