Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Updating the Scaling Roadmap

From: Paul Sztorc <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2017 21:40:32 -0400

Greg,

I would summarize your email as stating that: you regret writing the
first email, and regret the fact that it became a roadmap that everyone
signed. And that therefore it is obviously a concept NACK from you.

( That's pretty surprising to me, and I would expect others to find it
surprising as well. And I wonder whether you think we should take the
old one *down*, and why you would allow (?) so many other people to sign
it, etc. But I am not willing to press the issue. Some of your other
comments I also find confusing but there is little to be gained in
clarifying them. )

Generally, I still think that the roadmap was a helpful communication
device, which did more good than harm. And I am interested in hearing
what other people think.

Separately, and very important to me, is that you feel that there are
unresolved objections to drivechain's security model, which you decline
to share with me and/or the list. So I would hope that you instead
choose to share your thoughts (as is, presumably, the purpose of this list).

I will also respond to this:

>>> A fine intention, but I've checked with many of the top contributors
>>> and it sounds like the only regular developer you spoke with was
>>> Luke-Jr.  Next time you seek to represent someone you might want to
>>> try talking to them!
>> That is false. I could provide a list of names but I'm really not sure
>> what would be gained as result. You yourself admit that it is an
>> excellent list of research, almost all which you support directly.
>>
>> So I think your only real objection is that I didn't talk to you
>> specifically.
> Come now, this is needlessly insulting. I would have made the same
> comment if you had talked to me because you didn't talk to most/all of
> Matt Corallo, Wladimir, Pieter Wuille, Alex Morcos, etc.... e.g. the
> people doing most of the work of actually building the system.  Before
> making that comment I went and checked with people to find out if only
> I was left out.  Talking to Adam (who isn't involved in the project)
> and Luke-jr (who is but is well known for frustratingly extreme
> minority positions and also contracts for Blockstream sometimes) isn't

Let me try to explain my point of view. I did speak to several people,
in addition to the two names that I privately volunteered to you when
you asked me in a personal email earlier today. From my point of view
you had done no research (you failed to uncover any additional names),
used the information I volunteered to you against me (in the form of
false characterizations of negligent email writing!), and you also
suggested that, other than yourself and a few others, no one is
qualified even to write a first draft of a summary of present day
activities. This response is typical of the hostile review environment
which has existed in Bitcoin for years (I am more than used to it). If
instead of writing the first draft, I had written nothing, I would be
accused of being the ideas guy and/or "not contributing". You also
(rather rudely), put me in an awkward position, as the people who I
*did* ask now almost certainly prefer that I not reveal their names
(yet, a low name count is held as a strike against my competence).

Such are the perils of posting to bitcoin-dev! Let all be warned! : )

Paul

On 7/11/2017 8:07 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 11, 2017 at 10:17 PM, Paul Sztorc <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> I don't understand this at all. This document attempts to do exactly
>> what its predecessor did -- nothing more or less.
> That might be your impression, then you've misunderstood what I
> intended-- What I wrote was carefully constructed as a personal view
> of how things might work out. It never claimed to be a a project
> roadmap. Though as usual, I work hard to propose things that I believe
> will be successful... and people are free to adopt what they want.
>
> And to the extent that it got taken that way I think it was an error
> and that it has harmed progress in our community; and created more
> confusion about control vs collaboration.
>
> With perfect hindsight I wouldn't have posted it; especially since
> we've learned that the demand for increased capacity from many people
> was potentially less than completely earnest. (The whole, can't double
> capacity until we quadruple it thing...)
>
>> As to your specific complaints, I have addressed both the security model
> and the concept of mining centralization on this list in the recent
> past.
>
> I don't agree that you have; but for the purpose of this thread
> doesn't really matter if I (specifically) do or don't agree.  It's an
> objective truth that many people do not yet believe these concerns
> have been addressed.
>
>> I really don't understand what you are disclosing. That Adam asked you
>> for feedback on the draft? And then, in the next sentence, that not
> That Adam asked me to write publish a new "roadmap" for Bitcoin as
> you've done here, with particular features and descriptions, which I
> declined; and explained why I didn't believe that was the right
> approach.  And Adam worked with you on the document, and provided
> content for it (which I then recognized in the post).
>
> Set aside what you know to be true for a moment and consider how this
> might look to an outsider who found out about it.  It could look a
> like Blockstream was trying to influence the direction of Bitcoin by
> laundering proposals through an apparently unaffiliated third party.
> Doubly so considering who participated in your drafting and who didn't
> (more below).
>
> I don't think in actuality you did anything remotely improper
> (ill-advised, perhaps, since your goal to speak for developers but you
> didn't speak to them, IMO--) but I think transparency is essential to
> avoid any appearance of misconduct.
>
>> But surely you can
>> appreciate how bizarre your position on roadmaps is. What exactly, did
>> you intended to create at [1]? Since it is described explicitly as "the
>> roadmap in Capacity increases for the Bitcoin system", have you been
>> disagreeing with it's characterization as a 'roadmap' this entire time?
>> One wonders why you haven't said anything until now.
> I did--
>
> As Bryan pointed out... with the exception of the intro and end and a
> couple sentences in the middle my entire response to your post, with
> the position on "roadmaps" was written a long time ago, specifically
> to complain about and argue against that particular approach.
>
>> In my first email I list the benefits of having a roadmap. One benefit
>> is that, without one, it is likely that a large majority of outsiders
>> have almost no idea at all what is being worked on, what effect it will
>> have, or when it might be ready, or to whom/what they should turn to for
>> advice on such matters. Do you have a different way of addressing this
>> communication problem?
> I think you may be mistaking a roadmap with "communications"-- people
> taking about research they are exploring is great! and we should have
> more of it.  But like with RedHat and kernel features, we can't really
> roadmap things that are unresourced and currently just unimplemented
> exploration or test code-- without seeing things which are more or
> less done the community can't rightfully decide if they'd want to
> support something or not.  Perhaps they'll be good things perhaps
> awful-- the devil is in the details, and until an effort is fairly
> mature, you cannot see the details.
>
> There have, for example, been signature aggregation proposals in the
> past that required address reuse (could only aggregate if they're
> reused).  I would strongly oppose such a proposal, and I hope everyone
> else here would too.  So if I were a third party looking at your
> message, rather than the person who initially proposed the agg sig
> thing you're talking about, I wouldn't know if I could love it or hate
> it yet; and probably couldn't be expected to have much of an opinion
> on it until there is a BIP and/or example implementation.
>
> To the extent that a roadmap differs from communications in general,
> it is in that it also implies things that none of us can promise
> except for our own efforts; Completion of implementations, success of
> experiments, adoption-- basically assuming a level of top down control
> that doesn't exist in a wide public collaboration.
>
> One of the great challenges in our industry is that we don't have
> rings of communication: We don't have much in the way of semi-experts
> to communicate to semi-semi-experts to communicate to media pundits to
> communicate to the unwashed masses-- at each level closing the
> inferential gap and explaining things in terms the audience
> understands. We don't have things like LWN.   We'll get there, but it
> it took the Linux world decades to build to what it has now. I think
> various forces in the industry work against us-- e.g. we lose a mot of
> mid tier technical people to the allure of striking it rich printing
> money in their own altcoins.
>
> It might be attractive to try to end-run the slow development
> appropriate web of reliable communications by deploying high authority
> edicts, but it ultimately can't work because it doesn't map to how
> things are accomplished, not in true collaborative open source, and
> certainly not in an effort whos value comes substantially from
> decentralization. Doing so, I fear, creates a false understanding of
> authority.
>
> (It's a common misunderstanding, for example, that people do what I
> want (for example); but in reality, I just try to avoid wasting my
> time advocating things that I don't think other people are already
> going to do; :) otherwise, if _I_ want something done I've got to do
> it myself or horse trade for it, just like anyone else.)
>
> One of the great things about general communications is anyone can do
> it.  Of course, unless they're talking about their own work, they
> can't promise any of it will be completely-- but that is always true.
>  If someone wants some guarantee about work, they have to be willing
> to get it done themselves (and, of course, if it's a consensus
> feature-- that much is necessary, but still not sufficient to get a
> guarantee).
>
> [from your other reply]
>>> A fine intention, but I've checked with many of the top contributors
>>> and it sounds like the only regular developer you spoke with was
>>> Luke-Jr.  Next time you seek to represent someone you might want to
>>> try talking to them!
>> That is false. I could provide a list of names but I'm really not sure
>> what would be gained as result. You yourself admit that it is an
>> excellent list of research, almost all which you support directly.
>>
>> So I think your only real objection is that I didn't talk to you
>> specifically.
> Come now, this is needlessly insulting. I would have made the same
> comment if you had talked to me because you didn't talk to most/all of
> Matt Corallo, Wladimir, Pieter Wuille, Alex Morcos, etc.... e.g. the
> people doing most of the work of actually building the system.  Before
> making that comment I went and checked with people to find out if only
> I was left out.  Talking to Adam (who isn't involved in the project)
> and Luke-jr (who is but is well known for frustratingly extreme
> minority positions and also contracts for Blockstream sometimes) isn't
> a great approach for the stated goal of speaking for developers!