I am happy to hear that the status quo works well for you — and I’m certainly not advocating that it shouldn’t. This is not a zero-sum game. Just like some people really liking PayPal and Coinbase today doesn’t mean there’s no legitimate need for Haveno. All of those options can coexist.

These foundational systems for Haveno must not work better for any one segment of the population than they do for the others, because that can only isolate and fragment the Haveno ecosystem before it is even fully-formed.

There are so many options available for issue-tracking and for source code hosting. To use the 1 most common name from those large (and incredibly diverse) lists only because most are comfortable using that dominant player would be quite like not making/advocating for/using Haveno because Paypal and Coinbase work okay for so many people.

It’s just plain silly to host the tech for a decentralized platform on Github. This may be another instance of the hidden costs of using a platform where many devs (myself included) simply will not participate. Github is both proprietary and closed-source. It’s parent Microsoft has a decades-long history of antagonism towards open source.

The suggestion that anything has changed with Microsoft’s role in open source is not just naive, it’s actually dangerous. A wolf, even in sheep’s clothing, will predictably tear apart the community home the moment it is invited in. Microsoft’s controlling investment in Github is a testament to its ongoing commitment to its well-documented strategy to Embrace, Extend, and finally Extinguish everything open source.

Tech discussions need to take place in one central place, where all the developers are. That one central place needs to be absolutely secure, open-source, and community-controlled without any trace of giant corporate financial interests.

Otherwise why don’t we just use PayPal and Coinbase?

Someone went well out of their way to meticulously plan and then devote resources towards disrupting this for many days. I honestly can’t think of any better evidence in support of the necessity of having this community.

Is this true also for their “aggregated” pool? https://exch.cx/faq#aggregation

I’ve never used eXch for a swap to BTC, but it would be good to know for future reference.

No doubt.

Totally. Which is why I created this post to get some more opinions (and hopefully some experiences) from others. One way or the other, whatever information is revealed here will hopefully continue to be useful to others going forward.

The lack of a tor presence is quite telling, indeed. I hadn’t thought of that.

IIRC even LocalMonero had analytics deployed on their site. Or at least they did at one point.