Quote from: efudd on February 13, 2019, 02:17:50 AM

The following is from another thread where the user 'bswilmgton' provided the response that is quoted. I wanted to provide a public response to the concerns raised on this thread for openness.

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This is a fun thing to read I have to say. I will agree with one thing that is being said here, the fees (efudd). I believe every developer should get paid. I have seen your firmware and thought of trying it. But the dev fees outweigh the rewards. Now this is honestly your choice since you did do work to make it work correctly. But a small one time use fee or a 0.5% could be considered more reasonable. Also the back door into your the miner shouldn't be there. Bitmain does it, and I wish I was smart enough to remove it, but I am not. Maybe that is something you could eliminate, for everyone including yourself. But this is just my 0.02 so it means nothing.

1) There is no backdoor, plain and simple. There is, however, protection to ensure my work is not stolen and paid users are managed out of the same infrastructure. I know of multiple farms that claimed they had 1 machine and now run my previous versions on 1000+ machines. The fee I would have charged them would have been reclaimed in 1 day of their mining, but instead they decided to not be honest. That, and other folk who have behaved like chipless resulted in me putting protection in my work.
2) The firmware was available for a one-time fee, but management of sales took more time and effort than the worth. Heads up was given to inform users when sales would end.
3) The firmware was focused on the Z9 where the benefits well outweigh the cost in terms of the sale, or the dev-fee. The mini version only exists because of folk asking for it. I've stated to many users that I recommend batch1 firmware for the mini first... try my firmware if you'd like on your mini and see if it helps you.. if not, use batch1. I keep the batch1 firmware on my webpage at the bottom (https://releases.broked.net).
4) I'm unsure what you are referring to with 'bitmain' and 'back door', unless you are referring to their recent attempts at locking down firmware to prevent them from being upgraded... that is easy to do with physical access, it's slightly less easy to do for everyone else without physical access.

regarding a lower dev fee % -- it's really a catch-22 there. The cost of switching between pools for a dev fee results in a significant loss in earnings for the 10 minute it runs.. A 10 minute run really pays me out the equivalent of a 6 to 7 minute run. Dropping down even lower in % means even less run time to the point where the loss in switching times outweighs anything earned during the mining time.

It can be fixed and optimized, but it requires the pools to update their software to support some other methods. flypool agreed to do so, then never did... I have a few other pools that have, but I cannot use other methods effectively until the major pools all fix a particular bug.

Sincerely, thank you for your feedback and I hope this provides some clarity. It is not an attempt at justification, just information sharing.

-j

Thank you for your feedback. You are correct, I am referring mini and running Batch 1 firmware.

I was referring to back door that I have heard Bitmain can shut down or control their miner. This may not be true and I have never experienced it.