I was thinking this myself this morning. I have seen about 99% of the negative stuff be due to mostly people jumping to foregone conclusions. They get focused on one sprocket and don't see how the others that drive it make it work the way it needs to. There is a lot to gasp, and for a lot of people all it takes is one person to come along with over the top fear loaded words to spark cries that the whole system doesn't work out of analysis of one sprocket. So it gets wrapped up in the loaded term 'BitShares' and we all see people go on about it without really going on about it.

That's what you get when you make people face a fait accompli instead of consulting them in early stage.
The fact no comprehensive information has been released together with the announcement doesn't make things any better.
It's a bit desingenuous to complain that people focus on one sprocket when all there is to see is that sprocket.

Valid points have been made in this thread as well as the others related to that subject, but the way some of them were formulated made me feel like they were used more to spread FUD than to start an honest and constructive discussion. I find it hard to believe that there is a benevolent motive behind some posts when they are formulated using an aggressive tone and insinuating that Bitshares is getting ripped off by Cryptonomex.

In case you haven't realized yet, I'm deliberately playing the devil's advocate here to force people out of blind faith and get them to evaluate objetively the situation under a more rational perspective and find arguments to counter my diatribe. Ultimately, what I want is people to ask themselves if they support this operation because they trust the core develpers, or if they support this operation because they understand what it's about and believe that it's the right thing to do.

So far, I have read a lot of knee-jerk "this is FUD" reactions but very little in terms of actually addressing the concerns I have raised. If the BitShares community takes the Cryptonomex deal, it must do so because it is convinced after careful and objective evaluation of all aspects of the deal that this is in BitShares' best interest, not because it believes blindly in some of the people involved in the deal. And before people can be convinced, things have to be tested and challenged.

One very important thing that people don't realize is that this time around we are not dealing with the core developers directly but with Cryptonomex, a company funded by private investors which primary objective, as any company, is to produce value for its shareholders. How much you trust Dan and Stan personally is irrelevant because Dan and Stan are not the only persons in command. As founders they certainly have a majority stake at this stage, but they already have to report to and take into account their investors opinion and make decisions that make business sense and put company growth as first priority even if it diverges from their philosphical ideals. They don't have the choice if they want to convince investors to get in for other rounds of funding. And even if they manage to keep their commitment to BitShares while they are majority stake holders, at some point they will exit, sell some of their holdings or let seasonned executives steer the company and lose control of what the company is doing. There is no way to guarantee that Cryptonomex will remain supportive to BitShares, and that's really a big concern considering that under current deal, Cryptonomex is controlling BitShares' life support system. It will take a single board decision for Cryptonomere to pull the plug on BitShares, try to steer it in a different direction or revoke whatever non-legally-binding agreement that has been made initially. If you think this is fud, you are extremely naive and have no experience of the world of business.

The art of trolling is to spread FUD with couple of semi-valid points. The OP was so far away from constructive critisism that it can be ignored. It's clear that he didn't want to raise any kind of reasonable discussion on valid points. Declaring that Bitshares will lose "its soul and fundamental raison d'etre" is just bullshit.

The art of cheer-leading is to buy in to everything without applying any critical thinking, dismiss valid concerns frivolously without addressing any of them, and pollute overwise constructive discussions by reactive and fanboyish posts with no actual content.

so, i would love to read the new license

in my opinion the intention of the license is to prefend a commercial use of Graphene. I think this is just fine! So in my understanding this license needs to make this points possible

1. no commercial use without license from Cryptonomex
2. the BitShares Blockchain got a unrestricted license for any feature in the future. Cryptonomex will get all commercial rights for stuff who is coded for the BitShares community.
3. BitShares Community can make multiple chains as long as the BitShares community is a stakeholder of 100% of the new chain.

Fully agree on the above.

Some more points that need to be addressed:
4. Software that is not a blockchain based peer-to-peer network but needs to read or manipulate the BitShares or affiliated DACs blockchain(s) or listen to transactions on the network and interface with the network at peer protocol level should be allowed to reuse BitShares code and therefore Graphene without being subject to the commercial licence. This is to allow the creation of APIs to allow third party tools, exchanges, bridges and other services to interact directly with the network or the blockchain without having to rewrite the whole object serialization and signing code already handled by Graphene.
5. Third party developers (community) who contribute code to Graphene should retain all rights of distribution, reproduction and modification on the code they contributed. Cryptonomex can specify that developers accept to grant them unrestrictive commercial license on the code by submitting it to the Graphene repo. But the point is that contributing back code shouldn't affect the rights of the contributor to use the code as he sees fit.

Other points that don't belong to the software license, but are important anyway
6. Cryptonomex must disclose to the BitShares community if they own or registered any patents on the code of Graphene and grant unrestricted license of usage of the patents to BitShares.
7. Cryptonomex should clarify how changes to Graphene framework will be tested and confirm if they intend ot use BitShares as a test bed for new features and in which circumstances they would do so. They should also commit to only integrate features on BitShares that are needed by BitShares so that BitShares doesn't become a public test net for Graphene.

A last point that has nothing to do with the upgrade:
8. Are community members who are accredited investors welcome to participate in next funding round of Cryptonomex and will this be announced on the forum?

Quote from: klosure on June 14, 2015, 08:37:00 pm

So far I have seen half a dozen posts implying Ithat this is fud, but none has actually addressed any of the points I raised.

Graphene is open source, which was answered already in this thread.

This isn't addressing my points but nitpicking on terminology. It should be obvious from context that I meant "free software" / "non free software".
Anyway, I fixed this typo in posts, but this doesn't change the core of the argument.

Because of the license restrictions of Graphene, Bitshares cannot be forked or extended to a multiledger model, which means that it will not be able to evolve to fill other niches. The reuse restriction is a classic with proprietary licenses, but preventing Bitshares from evolving beyond a single ledger is novel and was added there for some reason. Now, if someone who cries "fud" may please explain why this restriction is necessary?

Quote from: karnal on June 14, 2015, 07:58:28 pm

I thought everything in BitShares 2.0 would be open source ?

Surely this is just FUD. It can be licensed AND open sourced, I believe that's where it stands.

Wrong terminology, but its clear what was meant. Not sure what the correct terminology is but in media we call it creative commons.

Thanks. I meant "free software", not "open source". Typo. Fixed in the original post.

OP, please read some more threads before you write a tl;dr wall of text full of wild guesses.

I have read all the threads there are to read on the subject.
If you disagree about anything I have said, feel free to quote and reply.