I agree that mining seems like a waste of resources, it woulld be interesting to see if a similar crypto currency could be devised that centers around protein folding , or some other usefull distributed computer simulation.
This could actually be good for open source, if company's are providing support through forums, then people will be used to this model when using open source without any "official" support.
Killing them is a nearsighted solution. If you kill some of them,there will be more resources for those that are left, which cause another increase in populqtion puttinyg us right back where we started.
And the idea if letting a bunch of shotgun-totting hicks go hunting within blocks of: our parliament, the residence of the prime minister, and many foreign embassy's, seems like a bad idea.