Transaction

j"1LAnZuoQdcKCkpDBKQMCgziGMoPC4VQUckM³ <div class="post">For a software like this, *only* GPL license makes any sense. It's not about an ideology but rather <b>anyone who would trust proprietary software for their financial transactions and a system like bitcoin is a fool</b> and deserves what's coming for them (which is a lot of stolen "cash"). Using <b>proprietary software may even result in hijacking of the whole bitcoin network</b> if significant portion of people would use such a client. There is no way to reliably test for backdoors or other nasty stuff, any closed-source software should be essentially banished by the bitcoin community. GPL allows you to make private in-house modification as much as you like so that's not an issue at all. The only situation that causes GPL to trigger is when you *distribute* the software to other people, in which case you have to provide sources along with it which is the only way anyone should accept any software dealing with bitcoin anyway.<br/><br/>You have to also realize that <b>there are no legal consequences to any "theft"</b> as using bitcoin from neutral point of view is essentially just moving some arbitrary bits around. So the bitcoin community is expected to self-regulate, which should come in a form of an enforced transparency (by all the users rejecting anything else). Considering any other license than GPL-like is playing with fire and is not going to end well.<br/><br/>I did not realize current bitcoin client was released under MIT license,<br/><br/><b>This should be changed to GPL IMMEDIATELY!</b><br/><br/>GPLv3 even protects you from said software to be locked up by DRM so even when it's open-source you would not have access to it. There is no disadvantage to using GPL license really. Anyone spreading FUD about GPL is either not appropriately informed/did not consider all the issues or has an ulterior motive as far as I'm concerned. I'm not going to trust any closed-source, that's for sure ... and if significant portion of the bitcoin community is, then I'm going to sell off all my bitcoins and get out as that's a prescription for disaster, sooner or later.<br/><br/>As much as adoption is concerned, I'm not interested in people who feel the need to keep the source closed and hidden from its users to "adopt" anything as I would hope anyone concerned about the success and reliability of the bitcoin network wouldn't either. To complain about weak adoption in that sphere is like complaining about weak adoption by criminals to me. If someone is honest, they should feel no interest in keeping the source closed ... and every sane person would accept ONLY open-sourced software anyway. It's a win-win situation <img alt="Wink" border="0" src="/static/img/emoticons/wink.gif"/></div> text/html