Anyone who feels so inclined is free to "pick up the mantle" and defend Bitcoin against perceived social attacks. I don't think that Bitcoin protocol developers have any particular responsibility to do so, and as such this particular discussion is likely going to quickly veer off-topic for this mailing list.

On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 10:37 AM, Brian Lockhart <brianlockhart@gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think that Bitcoin should be reliant upon courts or governments to defend itself against attacks of any form.

Agree 100%. Plus yeah, lotsa luck getting any success via those channels...

But assuming the answer to the perceived problem is to “fight fire with fire” (using social / marketing based efforts) who “should” pick up the mantle here? Without inciting riots by asking the question, wouldn’t that ostensibly be something the Bitcoin Foundation would lead on here? <ducks and runs for cover>

In any case, it’s frustrating to watch the ongoing FUD and scammery going unanswered in any “official” capacity.


On February 13, 2018 at 7:25:35 AM, Jameson Lopp via bitcoin-dev (bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org) wrote:

If I'm understanding the problem being stated correctly:

"Bitcoin is under a branding attack by fork coins."

The proposed solution is to disincentivize fork coins from using the word Bitcoin by altering the license terms. I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that the words of the license are basically useless unless there is an entity that intends to make use of court systems to threaten noncompliant projects into submission.

In my opinion, the perceived attack on Bitcoin here is social / marketing-based, thus it makes sense that any defense against said attack should also be social / marketing-based. I don't think that Bitcoin should be reliant upon courts or governments to defend itself against attacks of any form.

On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 9:25 AM, Natanael via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

Den 13 feb. 2018 15:07 skrev "JOSE FEMENIAS CAÑUELO via bitcoin-dev" <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>:
***
NO PART OF THIS SOFTWARE CAN BE INCLUDED IN ANY OTHER PROJECT THAT USES THE NAME BITCOIN AS PART OF ITS NAME AND/OR ITS MARKETING MATERIAL UNLESS THE SOFTWARE PRODUCED BY THAT PROJECT IS FULLY COMPATIBLE WITH THE BITCOIN (CORE) BLOCKCHAIN
***

That's better solved with trademarks. (whoever would be the trademark holder - Satoshi?)  

This would also prohibit any reimplementation that's not formally verified to be perfectly compatible from using the name. 

It also adds legal uncertainty. 

Another major problem is that it neither affects anybody forking older versions of Bitcoin, not people using existing independent blockchain implementations and renaming them Bitcoin-Whatsoever. 

And what happens when an old version is technically incompatible with a future version by the Core team due to not understanding various new softforks? Which version wins the right to the name? 

Also, being unable to even mention Bitcoin is overkill. 

The software license also don't affect the blockchain data. 


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