u/MrThunderizer

Was the map based on this, or just a crazy coincidence?

After reading Ptaq and Tim's comments I was left feeling optimistic about the future of bar, and to a certain extent still am. However, I am feeling increasingly skeptical, not because of the publishing agreement generally, but because of how the bar admins are communicating.

When I went to discord to find a link to the leaked documents, I was shut down hard with a half dozen people insisting there was nothing to see. Eventually I found the doc, and it makes sense why it's being hidden.

Before I list out my concerns, I'd like to first say that the majority of what PtaQ said is corroborated by the document. Hooded Horse is an excellent choice for a partner, and their interests are well aligned with the communities.

However, several things were clear

1. This decision was pitched to the larger dev group in a dishonest way. Much of the document was walking back their original comments , for example, how bar is dead if a deal isn't signed. It looks like they arranged the whole thing before even mentioning it to the dev group.

Edit: Based on comments from some devs, I don't believe this to be true anymore. It sounds like there was some initial confusion rather than dishonesty.

2. The deal will be signed even if it means the majority of contributors walk. There is a developer survey, so there's clearly some dialogue still happening, but language to the effect of "if anyone wants to still contribute" (one example of many) imply that it's very likely a significant number of other devs will walk. This is especially concerning considering how the legion devs recently left, for unknown reasons, and no information was ever released.

3. There is no profit cap. It isn't a nonprofit, and there are no protections from the new owners pocketing significant profit.

The only possible way to not be suspicious is if you've never been part of any business agreements, and believe the bar admins to be saints that hate money.

The solution is quite simple:

1. Embrace the open source ethos that made BAR great, and be more transparent. Large corporations have to hide information behind closed doors, but small projects like this don't benefit from so much secrecy.

2. Introduce a mechanism for legally capping profits. Maybe that means turning bar into a nonprofit. Maybe that's just some strict bylaws. I'm no lawyer, but something more substantive than "I pretty promise we will reinvest the money".

3. Create a plan to compensate new devs who make significant contributions, but don't want to be salaried. Say someone hopped on board and started contributing like crazy to make bar scalable. Maybe that person still has a job, and doesn't plan to continue contributing at that level forever. The bar admins should 1099 them and give them a payout. There should be a process to make sure this is all done fairly with clear terms. In addition to being fair, this will also greatly fix the disincentive problem, because then any contributors will know their time will be rewarded fairly, if it extends beyond sporadic commits.