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GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

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Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#171

Post by dchest »

foxylad wrote: post #159
dchest wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I am quite happy to return the favour. It's great that you're happy, but you don't have a choice. You'll go to jail if you don't "return favour". I also want to live in a society that is compassionate and takes care of those who can not take care of themselves. Simple logic will tell you that if a society is compassionate, it doesn't need force taxation. From dictionary: compassion is a feeling of wanting to help…

S/he does have a choice - move to somewhere without taxes (Vanuatu was mentioned earlier as a possibility). The fact that non-taxing countries aren't over-run with libertarian immigrants (despite being a tropical paradise!) makes me doubt the practicality of the concept.

Seriously? How "we're going to take your money and if you don't like it, you can move somewhere else" is even remotely close to being a voluntary choice in your mind?

You can try establishing some moral principles that will justify what government does (seriously, try this exercise), but let's not change meanings of words.

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#172

Post by alkonaut »

maratd wrote: post #158
alkonaut wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed the discussion on natural resources so I just wanted to point out the obvious - that corporations exist within a society and use a multitude of important "resources" to function at all. That's why it's pretty natural to have corporate taxes too.

> I noticed the discussion on natural resources so I just wanted to point out the obvious While what you said is certainly obvious, it had nothing to do with what I said. > That's why it's pretty natural to have corporate taxes too. It is absolutely idiotic to have corporate taxes. Corporations are nothing more than proxies for the shareholders. All profits are passed to the shareholders. Once they are, those shareho…

I'm sure there are structures where corporate tax is 0 and dividends are taxed at the same rate as any other income. That is a reasonable structure.

If one wants a cap gains tax that equates to the double taxation then cap gains would be higher than income tax. Could also be reasonable.

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#173

Post by coldtea »

sidhu1f wrote: post #142
coldtea wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GNU was created on the basis of the GPL. It's not an accident that the "GNU stack had the GPL", it was a plan from the beginning to create a system which people could use in freedom. The accident was that the plan was conceived by Stallman and involved GNU/GPL. What I'm saying is a similar plan with BSD/MIT licenses, if it was initiated by another guy first, would be just as good. In other words that the reason GNU…

What makes you so sure that, had the GNU stack been BSD/MIT licensed and as popular, that Microsoft etc. would not have come out with products featuring the same software but with proprietary extensions and closed licenses?

>What makes you so sure that, had the GNU stack been BSD/MIT licensed and as popular, that Microsoft etc. would not have come out with products featuring the same software but with proprietary extensions and closed licenses?

Was makes you so sure that it would matter? The original software will still be there and free for any modification one would want to do.

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#174

Post by sametmax »

kybernetyk wrote: post #13

>Unlike BitCoin or cash payments, Taler ensures that governments can learn their citizen's total income and thus collect sales, value-added or income taxes Wow, what a feature ...

Well, right now the banking system is transparent in a way that the gov can look at your bank accounts, but you can look at bank accounts on people at the gov. So it's an improvement.

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#175

Post by kriro »

From reading their page and watching a talk I don't quite get how they merge taxation and anonymity. As I understand it what individual transactions are for is protected but the total money flows are available and thus taxable? I take it they have categories (capital gains, income) etc. attached to the money streams since they are taxed differently in most countries? That would open the possibility to do some metadata/timing etc. analysis and at least some of that anonymity would get leaked. I would also have to prove somehow that this transaction was for example a capital gains transaction etc. Similarly I don't see how sales taxes are handled. That would require a somewhat specific location identifier on my part, would it not (in the U.S. you'd need to provide your state)? I'm also not sure how tax deductions would work. For those I usually have to turn in receipts and declare why the content of the items is relevant for the work.

Let's say I want to buy a book that I think could be flagged for political reasons and would want to keep the fact that I bought that book secret. I'd still have to prove that it was purchase of an item (possibly even indicating a book depending on how complicated the tax code is).

It feels like in practice it would be a rather soft layer of anonymity. I don't know I feel like I just don't get how taxation and anonymity can be merged as soon as the tax code gets complicated a lot of information needs to be leaked.

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#176

Post by sidhu1f »

coldtea wrote: post #173
sidhu1f wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you so sure that, had the GNU stack been BSD/MIT licensed and as popular, that Microsoft etc. would not have come out with products featuring the same software but with proprietary extensions and closed licenses?

> What makes you so sure that, had the GNU stack been BSD/MIT licensed and as popular, that Microsoft etc. would not have come out with products featuring the same software but with proprietary extensions and closed licenses? Was makes you so sure that it would matter? The original software will still be there and free for any modification one would want to do.

A majority (if not most) of the contributions to the Linux kernel come from developers paid to do so by the likes of Intel, Google, IBM etc. [1]. Do you have any reason to believe that said for-profit companies would have contributed to the same degree to a BSD/MIT licensed Linux kernel instead of focusing on a Linux kernel with proprietary extensions under a closed license?

[1] http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/infographics/who-w...

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#177

Post by NTripleOne »

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #162
dragontamer wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And one of the biggest Military Deployment in the past 10 years was 5,000 troops to Japan to assist in Fukashima. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/11/fukushima-navy-heal... Even if you think that "Fighting ISIS" is destroying civilization (erm... ambiguous. They're destroying civilization. And we are destroying them. I'd say that's a net-gain), there are plenty of good-will projects from the military. Like GPS,…

> Even if you think that "Fighting ISIS" is destroying civilization "Funding ISIS" (or loosely supplies and training for sectarian groups the US had(s) no control over).

I daren't guess how many lists you're on now for putting those two words together.

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#178

Post by mchaver »

foxylad wrote: post #159
dchest wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I am quite happy to return the favour. It's great that you're happy, but you don't have a choice. You'll go to jail if you don't "return favour". I also want to live in a society that is compassionate and takes care of those who can not take care of themselves. Simple logic will tell you that if a society is compassionate, it doesn't need force taxation. From dictionary: compassion is a feeling of wanting to help…

S/he does have a choice - move to somewhere without taxes (Vanuatu was mentioned earlier as a possibility). The fact that non-taxing countries aren't over-run with libertarian immigrants (despite being a tropical paradise!) makes me doubt the practicality of the concept.

It's often not a choice if you do not meet the countries requirements which are generally: be wealthy, have a higher degree and already have secured a job, or be married to a citizen/permanent resident. As another comment mentioned open borders would make it a choice.

A good test case is looking at movement within European countries that allow freedom of movement for other European citizens. I'm sure some people have moved to Andorra, Gilbratar, Liechtenstein, etc. for lower taxes but probably at a lower rate than people moving to places for employment opportunities.

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#179

Post by piotrkubisa »

stephenr wrote: post #10
MatthewWilkes wrote: post #7

So, semver is great and all, but 0.0.x releases just look silly, in my opinion. I've never seen someone zero index the least significant column before though, which makes it look even worse. Would people actually expect w piece of software marked as version 0.0.0 to be anything more than a placeholder?

0.x.x means pre-release to me (as in, sure - play with it, but don't fucking rely on it working). 0.0.0 is bizarre though.

> "A pre-release version MAY be denoted by appending a hyphen and a series of dot separated identifiers immediately following the patch version. Identifiers MUST comprise only ASCII alphanumerics and hyphen [0-9A-Za-z-]" [1]

I think they should use 0.0.1-pre instead of 0.0.0. The version 0.0.0 I would consider as "the development have not started yet".

[1] http://semver.org/

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#180

Post by stephenr »

piotrkubisa wrote: post #179
stephenr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0.x.x means pre-release to me (as in, sure - play with it, but don't fucking rely on it working). 0.0.0 is bizarre though.

> "A pre-release version MAY be denoted by appending a hyphen and a series of dot separated identifiers immediately following the patch version. Identifiers MUST comprise only ASCII alphanumerics and hyphen [0-9A-Za-z-]" [1] I think they should use 0.0.1-pre instead of 0.0.0. The version 0.0.0 I would consider as "the development have not started yet". [1] http://semver.org/

I think this advice is even more pertinent:

> How should I deal with revisions in the 0.y.z initial development phase?

> The simplest thing to do is start your initial development release at 0.1.0 and then increment the minor version for each subsequent release.

Source: http://semver.org/#how-should-i-deal-with-revisions-in-the-0...

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