Quote from: fluffypony on August 11, 2014, 03:52:12 PM

Quote from: synechist on August 11, 2014, 03:39:35 PM

Quote from: fluffypony on August 11, 2014, 03:13:12 PM

First you plan, then you talk, then you publish a whitepaper, then you write code, then you release. Not the other way around.

Nope. First you research, then you code, then you explain it to everyone (via a scholarly paper and other means).

Invert this order and you'll facilitate the creation of innumerable P&D coins that the general public will have a hard time distinguishing from the quality projects. And this hinders the entire altcoin phenomenon.

To not lend support to XC's way of doing things is, in effect, to lend support to an awfully unethical environment composed mostly of scams.

Nonsense - Satoshi released the whitepaper and received commentary on it before he released the code. Specifically, he released the whitepaper on 2008-11-01, and then he released Bitcoin 0.1 on 2009-01-09. I have no doubt he had a large portion of the code completed by the time he released the whitepaper, but those 2 months gave him time to refine things after discussions on the cryptography mailing list. This is important, especially with a cryptocurrency or other cryptography related projects, because you cannot have knowledge of all pitfalls a priori, and discussions with cryptographers and a peer review process at least allows the major ones to be removed.

About the only occurrence I've ever seen of cryptographically sound software being released before the whitepaper was BitMessage where they were both made available within days of each other in November, 2012. The difference is that he knew that no great amount of users were going to have their messages at risk initially, so there was time to fix major pitfalls. Additionally, nobody that got in to BitMessage early had any sort of financial advantage over those that got in later.

Doing things the other way round when you are dealing with people's money is not only grossly irresponsible, but incredibly dangerous. That there is closed-source code not even being made available for review is unconscionable. You should be ashamed of yourself for even thinking that this is a good idea.

Satoshi did that before an entire ecosystem grew up around Bitcoin and its many offshoots.

To do the same now would, as stated, be obviously unethical. I don't need to reiterate why.

As for your remark about releasing closed source code, those who consider it a risk and still invest in XC stand to benefit, and those who don't, do not stand to benefit should XC succeed. That's all it comes down to. "Dangerous"? Of course, insofar as dangerous" implies "risky". Unethical? By no means.

But to assert that releasing closed source code is "dangerous" also implies, as far as I can see, that developers should take responsibility for the risks that their investors make. This is just silly. We've been completely open about our policy on open source and any investor would factor this in when they do their due diligence. Come on. What sort of libertarian-paternalist black swan does this position make of you?