about the darksend open source dillema - how about this, the dev could put on darkcoin.io that the source will be made open once DRK reaches the price of $100 per coin. That would mean it's well established and known by then
There's no guarantee it will ever reach that price, especially if people don't trust it, if would make a laughing stock of darkcoin. It's possible to hire from private firms for a security audit of the code. These are professionals in their field and are probably held to NDAs.
still open source gives people a better "feeling" and is in line with all the crypto - from the people to the people.
A statement on the darkcoin.io site reading something along these lines: "We believe in sharing but we also believe that inovation should be rewarded. To give DRK a fair advantage over the future clones the DarkSend source will be made public once DRK reaches a market cap of X."
I think that's nothing to laugh about
A professional audit of the code, with NDAs, makes the most sense to me. Saying a coin will be open source when it hits a certain level is sort of meaningless, unless it's a dinky number ($2/coin), as who knows if it'd ever get there? Would saying DarkCoin will go open source when it hits $50-100/coin make anyone feel any better really?
The better idea is to do the professional audit, and if you really want an open source sort of comment... go with a disclaimer that the developer may at some point open source the project if he feels it is warranted, if it reaches wide acceptance. And to me, wide acceptance = bitcoin popularity (so years and years from now).