Mr. Andresen, approaching baller status. (Photo: Facebook)

Bitcoin may have just gotten an upgrade.

Bitcoin Gavin Andresen announced today on the Bitcoin Talk forums that he has launched a non-profit, modeled on the Linux Foundation, that will seek to "help people exchange resources and ideas [about Bitcoin] more freely."

If you're unfamiliar with the Linux Foundation, it's a non-profit aimed at promoting the growth and advancement of Linux, an open-source operating system. David Perry, author of Coding in My Sleep, describes the foundation as:

A non-profit entity explicitly designed to help Linux succeed. It does this by acting as a neutral spokesperson, building networks of Linux users and developers, promoting the use of standards to make developers' lives easier and so on. They also sponsor a number of key developers financially, turning what would otherwise be a hobby into an actual pays-the-bills job, thus allowing the developers to remain independent and work full time on improving Linux.

Mr. Andresen has similar hopes for the Bitcoin Foundation, which will help to standardize and fund Bitcoin infrastructure, keep the currency secure, and work to correct false interpretations and misinformation about Bitcoin. Bitcoin developers and aficionados can pay for membership status, which ranges from a 2.5BTC annual membership (about $30, according to Preev) all the way up to 10,000BTC/year (about $123,000--which, whoa).

"I think Linux is a great 'role model' for Bitcoin," he wrote in the announcement. "It is a very successful open source project that really embraced the notion of 'open,' encouraging the use of the core technology for a wide range of applications. I hope that the Bitcoin Foundation will help do the same for Bitcoin."

Of course, the Linux Foundation is about promoting an operating system that only accounts for 1.55% of the OS market share, whereas the Bitcoin Foundation will work to promote a cryptocurrency sometimes used for blackmarket activity. Bitcoin has seen its own share of PR nightmares in recent months, from an exchange-paralyzing heist to talk of Bitcoin ponzi schemes. Perhaps the Bitcoin Foundation is just what the currency needs to clean up its image.

The Foundation itself even plainly states the need for an organization that can help break Bitcoin out of its cyberdungeon:

As the Bitcoin economy has evolved, we have all noticed barriers to its widespread adoption—botnets that attempt to undermine the network, hackers that threaten wallets, and an undeserved reputation stirred by ignorance and inaccurate reporting.

To us, it became clear that something had to be done. We see this foundation as critical for bringing legitimacy to the Bitcoin currency. Only then can we increase its adoption and positive impact on the world’s finance.

The Bitcoin Foundation has stacked its board with well-known, high-profile people active in the Bitcoin community so that users feel safe donating. Still, as Mr. Perry points out, "according to the dissenting voices, it's representative only of the 'big business' side of Bitcoin, not the actual users." Indeed, some users have expressed dissent on the boards, but for the most part they seem supportive of a unified effort to legitimize Bitcoin.

Plus, Mr. Andresen stresses that these decisions aren't set in stone.

"The structure of the Foundation can be changed by a vote of its members," he wrote, "and exactly what the Foundation does will largely depend on who is willing to step up do the work to make things happen."

Guys, it's not THAT big of a secret. (Photo: Wikipedia)

Is it possible that Microsoft is partially staffed by developers who are, literally, 12-year-old boys? Maybe we're dealing with a Big situation, here? Because we're pretty sure that's the best possible explanation for this, from NetworkWorld:

"Some chucklehead working for Microsoft thought it would be funny to slip a thinly camouflaged sexist remark -- "big boobs" -- into software code that connects the Linux kernel to Microsoft's HyperV virtualization product."

We could easily work ourselves into a tizzy over this. But instead, we'll take a cue from our unflappable high school principle and say: Guys, we work on the Internet. It's going to take a lot more than some juvenile reference to titties to shock us.

No, not this kind of bug.

The final minute of June 30, 2012 was actually 61 seconds long. The extra, or "leap second" was added to the clock to ensure official time clocks the world over were accurately synchronized to the Earth's rotation. Unfortunately for big-brand websites like Reddit and Gawker, neither Linux nor Java's base application platform were prepared for the change. Wired reports:

Many computing systems use what’s called the Network Time Protocol, or NTP, to keep themselves in sync with the world’s atomic clocks, and when an extra second is added, some just don’t know how to handle it.

Foursquare was among the sites briefly felled by the "leap second's" effect on Linux servers. For the location check-in service this was insult added to injury--Foursquare was also a casualty of the storm-induced outage that took out Amazon Cloud Services on Friday. Neither Opera nor Google was affected by the change--Opera's Marco Marongiu blogged about possible methods of avoiding "leap second" snafus at the beginning of June.

While admins for the sites affected by Saturday's tiny jump forward may grumble, at least adjustments keep the Gregorian Calendar more accurate than the Mayan Calendar. So when the singularity of 12/21/12 hits, it will be right on the money.