If one of the goals - a good goal, IMHO - is to finance the development of Bitcoin software, it looks natural to me that developers have an influence over the organization. If developers have no influence at all, I'd say it's worse. I find it good that developers have a say in where the money goes, which are the priorities etc.
Same thing can be achieved without a conflict of interest with an independent contract. Lead dev and dev team can specify what the funds will be spent on developing in there.
If the organization is hiring the development, it's the organization who specifies priorities. By putting developers in high positions inside this organization, these developers get to influence these priorities. I don't see a conflict of interest.
Now they are locked with this organization
Why are they locked?
That's not accurate. First of all, do not confuse "profit" in its generic economical sense with "profit" in its financial sense, of "monetary profit" or "dividends". Every organization "seeks profit", in the sense that every organization aims to create something of value for its participants. Profit, in that sense, means to add value, to improve one's level of satisfaction.
And every organization that doesn't use force to keep itself may go "bankrupt". If its donors judge they are not adding value to them, they'll stop donating. That will force the organization to shrink, as happens with a company that doesn't manage to sell its products. If it doesn't shrink accordingly, or if the donation goes down all the way to zero, the organization will break.
Wrong. Donations can be made by anyone and they can be of any size. This means that if you have a deep purse you carry more weight and can buy more power which no one will notice. On the other hand a for profit business sells a service, the same service at the same price for everyone. There if they don't have many clients (which translates to broad support) they go out of business and a deep purse can't change that by buying their service over and over again because it would be obvious what is happening.
Again, I insist, praxeologically speaking, every organization, every individual, seek profit. From an economical POV, it makes no sense saying this organization is not for profit. And every organization may run out of business.
Plus, if somebody with deep enough pockets wants to save a business - whatever business - he will always be able too.
The real danger is not somebody buying up this organization and then get things developed for them - this "danger" exist right now, nothing's stopping rich people from buying Bitcoin development from its main developers.
The real danger - and in that, the lie that is their name may play a role - is people trusting this organization more than they should.
There's no reason to believe this organization would accomplish their goals better if they tried to sell stuff/services instead of asking for donations. I think the best approach is mixing both of them.
