Yes they pay Gavin, but that's only because we accept their changes and update our software. If we stop doing that and fork QT, the need for them diminishes quickly.
Gavin doesn't need BF to get paid. He could open a
ReDonate account tonight and get enough people to sign up to support whatever salary requirement he has.
I like you, let's be friends.
Question is whether or not Gavin would be willing to break away from the Foundation. Hint: the answer is [probably] no.
Maybe this is all part of Gavin's scheme.
He's said before that he is in favor of a heterogenous network composed of multiple implementations - perhaps Bitcoin Foundation's job is to piss us all off and get people to take a serious look at btcd and Bits of Proof.
I wonder what it would take to make Armory work with btcd instead of bitcoind...
Well, I am always reminded of
this post by satoshi:
I don't believe a second, compatible implementation of Bitcoin will ever be a good idea. So much of the design depends on all nodes getting exactly identical results in lockstep that a second implementation would be a menace to the network. The MIT license is compatible with all other licenses and commercial uses, so there is no need to rewrite it from a licensing standpoint.
Although there are so many scenarios Satoshi could not have been expected to plan for. I've always been a fan of alternative implementations although they must be maintained and tested with utmost care and precision.