Re:I think I'll donate 1,000 bucks to (Score 1)

Q. Does some kind of authority verify authorship?

A. Publishers create giftfile certificates. They certify to the giftpool and the public that the work is nonproprietary: a public good. Authors may be the original publishers, but once a nonproprietary work is published anyone can create a new certificate, personally I hope that Debian and Redhat pickup, compile, and republish my works, but so could that pesky evil Malory.

The giftfile system itself is a tool, one built to fill a huge gap in our community's infrastructure, but it is just a tool. It is up to the community to build systems of trust, mechanisms to reallocate upstream, and ultimately to police itself. Do you really want a centralized authority?