The intention behind your point is valid. Trust is earned, even with the OEM. My stuff exists because hardware from bitmain arrived on my door step in a crippled state; artificially limited in terms of hashrate by almost a factor of 50% (Antminer Z9). That didn't earn "trust points" in my book from bitmain.

I can't speak to other folk's work, but mine doesn't have "hacks in them" to take hashes; the functionality is documented and I provide the user with 3 different methods of using the firmware, all with full functionality. Paid license, sponsor paid license (i.e., use it on specific pool(s), it acts as a paid license with full funcionality), and a dev-fee supported mode (which, I guess could be 'taking hashes'), depending on your perspective... each of these modes exist at the request of portions of the user base.

Mine also does not violate the GPL for a variety of reasons, the simplest of which is that I do not modify cgminer on-disk and follow the proper linking _recommendations_ in the GPL FAQ in terms of how my additive functionality is implemented.

The key point of my response was I disagreed with the blanket statement and would instead encourage users to research, investigate, and make conscious choices.




No.... but I can offer the same I've offered to others in this state: contact me on discord (invite in my signature) and we can set up a time for me to try to help you remove this mess from your environment with teamviewer or whatever your choice of screen sharing is.

-j