Oleg Andreev
Month
Imagine if you prefix your open source license with bitcoin addresses of major contributors with their designated shares:
Copyright (c) 2013 MyProject Developers
Send donations to these addresses:
1JwSSubhmg6iPtRjtyqhUYYH7bZg3Lfy1T 750 Alex Johnson
139FpKh63Vn4Y73ijtyqq8A6XESH8brxqs 200 Mike Brown
1PNvbXZFysxvx3252w9JHMa7zbG95snqnm 50 Jack Howard
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction,
including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge,
publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software,
and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so,
subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
A bitcoin wallet app may parse each line as 1) bitcoin address, 2) number of shares and 3) a name of the person separated by spaces. Any amount entered by the user will be split in proportion to the number of shares and will be sent in a single transaction.
Initial developers will decide how they split shares among themselves and how they grant them to new contributors. Every user will see how money will be distributed before payment. This removes great amount of “budget management” politics. If developers cannot come to a “fair” distribution of shares, they will not get any donations at all (because they’ll get them only after they decide how to split the earnings).
Usually, every project starts with a single person, who puts his bitcoin address right in the license, so anybody can send him a “thank you” payment. When another contributor joins and initial developer wants to share earnings with her/him they decide on share distribution. When third person joins, both previous shareholders decide who gives up how many shares in favor of a newcomer. Every developer is always free to redistribute his own shares to whoever he wants without asking permission of other shareholders.
When people see that Bitcoin grows 300% in a couple of months, they do not believe there is a real reason for it. It must be a speculative bubble, things normally do not grow that fast.
When you invest in a company, it takes time to produce something. The value cannot simply jump through the roof because there are humans working, everything is hard and no one knows if the final product will be appreciated by the consumers.
Except, in case of Bitcoin this analogy does not apply. First, Bitcoin in a sense, is already a product available for everyone. It is already produced and proved to work, so you do not really invest in something that does not yet exist. Secondly, when investing in Bitcoin you do not invest in some particular business with a group of people managed by a single CEO. You invest in a huge variety of businesses in multiple countries with different business models, different risks and legal environments. So even if one of the businesses makes a big mistake, Bitcoin is still in demand by many others.
Of course, it does not prove that Bitcoin is inherently less risky. Even if the number of global risks is lower than in a private company, one single risk can outweigh all benefits and destroy your investment. But you should understand the fundamental difference between individual stocks and Bitcoin: investing in Bitcoin is like investing in the whole stock market 100% filled with startups and hot new ideas, not some portfolio of relatively stable stocks with the proven business models and moderate revenue streams. Of course, many startups fail. But when some succeed, they succeed spectacularly and cover all the losses. Buying Bitcoin is being a venture capitalist yourself on a worldwide scale.
