Quote from: TPTB_need_war on April 15, 2016, 10:07:33 AM

Quote from: traumschiff on April 15, 2016, 09:50:41 AM

Quote from: smooth on April 15, 2016, 09:26:23 AM

Quote from: kushti on April 13, 2016, 12:15:47 AM

kushti is here (writing from a some place in Russia, yes).

First, some historical points. Scorex was started in Nov, 2014 as kinda funny project. To that moment, I spent few months working for Nxt. As you may know, Nxt prevents forking with closing code not released into production yet and also by somewhat terrible licensing(since 1.5?). Anyway, it has a lot of forks, and some of them with very interesting ideas (e.g. BURST).

To have thing open to the extreme I've published Scorex under CC0(Public Domain) license, so everyone can do literally anything with the code.

Since last autumn development of Scorex is subsidized by IOHK, and since Feb I'm a Research Fellow and Scorex project director in IOHK Research.
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Well, Scorex(as well as papers publicly published) could be used in any project. That surely does not mean collaboration with IOHK. However, we would like to get issues on core functionality to be reported to resolve and also (and especially) pull requests.

Me & Sasha, Charles & Sasha, and three of us had some conversations after Sasha's decision to build Waves on top of Scorex. No any collaboration has been established to the moment as a result. And that is surely up to Charles.

I do not endorse neither oppose Waves ICO. I do not have much technical details, and I'm not competent in other topics.

@kushti Did you ever have any formal or informal agreement to serve as an advisor or in any other role on the Waves team, either individually, as a Nxt developer, or as an employee of IOHK? (The latter seems clear from previous posts but best to clarify.)

If not, did you engage in any communications with the Waves team or founders which could reasonably have led them to believe you would serve in such a role?

His statement seems to imply this case, but what you are asking for him to do is the very thing he seems to want to avoid (and we don't know why, but probably some legal issues with IOHK). Not sure if the question makes sense.

My (wild guess) opinion/speculation follows. I can read between the lines too, as many of you probably did also. Kushti is friends with Sasha. Kushti is a Russian who isn't hung up on formalities of laws we have in the West and is primarily interested in developing the code and having enough money to afford better lighting in his dingy apartment (this is a joke for anyone who has seen the Waves Hangout video). I guesstimate that Kushti doesn't have an ethical stance against ICOs and he probably thinks it was all just hunkydory. But then Charles probably explained that this is unacceptable for the company and for Charles personally being a USA citizen. So Kushti appears to be trying to ride the middle line.

The problem here appears to be incompatible cultures. We appear to have different attitude in the West towards issues revolving around intellectual property, contracts, and investment laws. Charles hails from academia or math research, and he wants to form diverse and global ties. I am thinking he is bumping up against the sort of quagmires that can arise in international business.

My stance is that Sasha needs to realize that if he wants to integrate with our hitech world in the West, then he needs to play ball within our more formal legal structures. I actually hate red tape and lawyering up. I love production and coding. So it is strange to see me taking this stance. I guess I have become very pragmatic at age 51. Alas I am not 20s and 30s carefree now. By not being careful, I encountered some big mistakes in my life. I am much more cautious.

I agree with your speculation in the first part, but I partly disagree with the conclusion which is bolded. They are building something that doesn't have to rely on US laws or financial institutes, but if you want complete mainstream adoption it obviously is helpful.

In this case it seems possible that the end-product can be marketed to banks or finance businesses even if the kickstarter part was funded by a non-(US)compliant funding. Can still pass as a grey area.