Well, I'm not sure I want to really get into the discussion with Kano et al with regards to hardware access.  But here's the simple truth in a nutshell:

For the development of the FPGA, as evidenced by our shipping times (not counting the past month or so), we simply did not have the hardware to spare to just send out.  Everything, literally every single piece of hardware that was assembled and functioanl got shipped out immediately (after a burn in of course).  We did not keep any hardware back for testing, development, etc... we shipped everything.  Stripped the whole place bare.  I kid you not... this is one of the reasons EasyMiner was so delayed - we had nothing to test it with.  We are catching up now, and hence we have been able to put some resources into continuing the development of EasyMiner. 

Personally, I would have been happy to send a unit to Kano at some point when there was hardware available... but lets look at the facts - our shipping time was delayed and we take a constant beating in the forums both then, now and we will likely take it into the future.  Where was that hardware to come from?  Someone's order?  Then we'd have the same issue, just someone else that was unhappy.  Then on top of that, as much as I respect Kano's work, he's constantly badmouthing BFL on every count so it makes it really hard to justify showing the love at this point.  I'm not saying it couldn't happen or shouldn't happen.  If I were overseeing that sort of thing back then, things would have probably played out a bit differently, but I wasn't and there's nothing I can do about it. 

What I can do is fix things going forward, but again, it makes it really hard when Kano does not appear to even want to reach out and let me fix stuff and mend fences, but just keeps bad mouthing BFL at every turn.  What's kind of funny is we (BFL) have been working on a plan for showing the love to the developers, but it's not something we have discussed (or plan to discuss) publicly as of yet, since the details aren't entirely nailed down and we are working really hard to get the ASICs out the door on time.  Yes, even Kano was included in that.

Kano, I don't want to badmouth Tom or his accomplishments but honestly, his offering is not really competitive to our products.  Our price and performance are far superior in every category so it's not really an issue. I'm glad he's putting out his offering to give people a choice though, but in the end, it all comes down to money and profit for the majority of miners, not ideology.  Do you really think $230 is worth losing over 30% of your hashing power and consuming an enormous amount of power in the process?  You might think so, but most people won't.  Heck, you'd probably make up that $230 in the first few months in power savings alone.

But I am, once again, trying to reach out and mend fences but you keep throwing it back in my/BFL's face.

Kissing ass has never been on my agenda.  However, what is on my agenda is a) not blind hatred far exceeding the cause and b) an complete disregard for the fact that I have been trying to make changes for the better with regards to community relations and yes developers are part of that community.

With regards to our discussion, you made a blanket statement that we "needed" (as in, it was a requirement to have mining software and that there was none since no developer would work on it) and I corrected you that we have EasyMiner, so that statement was not true.  Would we like to have cgminer support?  Sure, but is it required?  No, our devices will mine just fine without it.  So nothing has changed since that, we are still in the same position.  We have the backing of basically all the popular miners except (apparently) cgminer... that being the case, why would we want to support a miner that doesn't want to support us?  This is not really a rhetorical question, because I would like to hear your answer to this. For the record, we planned on supporting you/cgminer anyway regardless of what you respond with, but I would like to hear why you think we should support someone who clearly does not want to support us and has only begrudgingly done so up to this point?

oh, so much useless drama

I don't think otherwise, it's a reasonable statement and I believe it to be true.


Actually, you have, at least by implication.  You asked (and I'm paraphrasing here)  how are we going to sell our devices if we don't have mining software.  That implies that no developer is going to work with us.  At the time it was false for a number of reasons and it's still false now.  But lets break down this argument for a second:

Kano, have you now or do you ever demand AMD (or nVidia and Intel to a lesser extent) pay homage to the developers to support their hardware?  No?  Why not?  They owe you just as much as any other hardware developer, since you (or another developer) are required to write code to support their devices, both GPU and CPU.  As a software developer myself, I find your argument spurious at best.  I write software because a) I like to write software and b) I like people to use my software.  My pool would not be where it's at today without the users. A number of my other software products would not be where they are today without the users (ShowEQ being the biggest example).  I add support for various features in my software to attract users and have people enjoy it, not because I expect a reward from them.

Take out AMD support from cgminer, see how far it gets at that point. Why was it put in there in the first place, were you expecting a reward from AMD? No, you wanted to attract users.


I only know bits and pieces of BFLs discussion with ckolivas, so I can't really comment on that.  I do know that going forward, those discussions will/would be very different.  But as far as why I think miner software developers should work on our devices for free, please see above.  If you want your software to be popular, you have to support the popular devices, otherwise your software will fail.  Do you honestly think cgminer would be where it's at today if it did not support BFL devices?  It's a symbiotic relationship.

Now that said, I am absolutely 100% on board with showing the love to the developers in the form of hardware donations to the cause because it's nice and it's the right thing to do.  But for you to say or even imply that it's entirely one sided is completely disingenuous.  You yourself even admit you do things because you want to and it's your choice.


I'm not making any attempt, you brought it up.  As I said, we have already made plans to show support to the bitcoin developer community and those plans have been in place (if not finalized) long before Tom made any announcements.  You can believe that or not, it doesn't matter and it doesn't change our plans and you'll still be included on those plans regardless of the animosity you hold for BFL, if for no other reason than it's the right thing to do.  


Who was expecting you to do anything for free?  When/where did BFL say "Hey bitches, write code for us!  And do it for free!"  Can you direct me to that post or PM or email?  I mean, I suppose that could have happened prior to me coming on board with BFL, but I very seriously doubt it.  In fact, let me tell you how it really happened (because I do know this part):

1. BFL was not familiar with the mining scene and approached Ufasoft to create software for them and paid that developer to do so.
2. During the development process, the BFL information leaked and we started our journey (we being the Bitcoin community) back in late October/Early November of 2011.
3. Ufasoft development continued, but scattered support for BFL devices started creeping into cgminer and poclbm.
4. Frustrated with the Ufasoft result and worn out from all the complaining, work begins on EasyMiner.
5. Eventually full blown support is put into cgminer, since the Ufasoft software was a major pain in the ass to use.  BFL never requested this directly to my knowledge and EasyMiner development slows down.
7. BFGMiner splits off from CGMiner due to philosophical differences, mostly unrelated directly to BFL, but mostly related to FPGA in general.
8. EasyMiner development picks back up

So as you can see, BFL did, in fact, commission a developer to create software for the BFL devices.  It didn't really work out as well as they hoped, but by that time ckolivas et al had already added support to cgminer, so it wasn't really a big issue.  If it were, BFL would have figured out a solution, either by paying another developer or finishing EasyMiner.  ckolivas, Luke-jr, etc... put support in their programs for BFL because they were popular devices, not because BFL demanded or expected it.  It was already there by the time BFL decided to switch the focus away from Ufasoft.


I absolutely agree with this.


I'll be straight up with you here, if you wern't so vocal in your hate for BFL, the "support" probably would have come long before I came on board.  That's the plain and simple truth.

I do think you're obligated to include the quotation marks and a [...] where the rest of the sentence was cut out.

Otherwise, nice quote, yes .

I'll do it, Inaba_Josh. Send me a unit!

I overhauled Luke-jr's BFL code to make it more robust, but also slight more efficent (cpu usage wise).

I doubt this is the case, unless BFL is grossly incompetent. Sticking to their October/November release date without even having started production seems like wishful thinking at best. BFL doesn't seem grossly incompetent so I assume this isn't the case.

Anyone who signs a message ,signs it with his name...
why BFL does't sign like this?
Eg:

" John Doe,
     BFL"

Guys for outsiders you are still fighting around with specs for vaporware... so... do this per PM or reveal some information.