You've never had any interactions with the business world or educated yourself a little on the matter have you?
Let me break the news for you: no one is stupid enough to disclaim their business plans in full details.
Please stop making assumptions about what I know or have done.
The point about blockstream isn't that they need to or should reveal trade secrets.
But many would like them to reveal enough to mitigate concerns over conflict of interests.
Whether or not that is feasible is unknown, but clearly they haven't done it and
I am pointing out that important fact.
As far as a centralized authority being in charge of the code, you are entitled to that opinion.
Ironically, that is an opinion Mike Hearn has expressed too. But you are anti-XT. So that
just shows you like the idea of authority, as long as it's one you agree with.
[]nullc
BRAINSSSS.
But really, look at the kind of work we're doing open source cryptographic solutions to solve really hard problems which other people aren't able or aren't trying to solve, E.g. the CT range proofs that protects commercial confidentiality by making transaction values private. Or using Elements Alpha to give people powerful, secure, auditable databases for internal transaction tracking and clearing. Helping smaller players the Bitcoin industry with uniform access to technical firepower that they're not justified hiring full time (and perhaps couldn't-- being the one hard core bitcoin guru at at web shop is a lonely place to be).
Some companies to look at for examples would be things like RedHat's, Cisco's open source and IETF work, and the Mozilla Corporation. (I'm not saying our dozen or so person company is like these organizations yet, but they are places we've looked for inspiration, places people at blockstream have worked before, etc.)
If you can't grasp what their model is after reading this then no amount of explaining will do the trick. Maybe you ought to ask them for a "take your kids to work day" kind of thing?
