I don't think that whitelisting should be removed.
The whitelisting must be removed.
but why?
^^ what he said ^^.. but why??
So that the network can properly scale.
And to be decentralized
OK
I see the logic with the scaling issue, if pool ops were unrestricted in setting up XDAG pools, we would perhaps see more people mining. However the decentralisation isn't relative to the number of pools... anyone can still mine and collect XDAG... I don't see the whitelisting as centralisation of the coin, more of a bringing-together of the community. We all discuss things here and on the chat channels, and everyone knows where to go to find info, without the whitelisting, is it still possible to insist that a pool donates to the community fund?
You are thinking in a logic of current state: node and pool is the same. If i'm not mistaken, the plan is to create two different daemons, the nodes should always be free to set up for anyone.
The pools can work differently, or not. In my opinion, pools donations to the community should not be mandatory, but the official channels should only support and promote the ones that contribute to the community fund and white-list them as trusted.
edit for disclaimer: I'm a pool co-owner and I don't like the fact people come to me asking for help to get whitelisted. That process is centralized and it should't be.