Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Concerns Regarding Threats by a Developer to Remove Commit Access from Other Developers

From: Milly Bitcoin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2015 12:11:24 -0400

You misunderstand what I am saying.  I am not saying I have a specific 
process that should be followed, I am saying that whatever the process 
is then it should be formalized or at least written down.  That way the 
stakeholders have something to work with and keeps people on track.  
Since some people are saying they don't really know what the process is 
the first step would be to describe the current process.  I don't fully 
understand the current process but I can see it is not formalized and 
nobody can even give me a clear description of what it is.  Once you 
have it written down then changes/improvements can be proposed.

The first baby step was already done by the Foundation in developing 
that risk study.   A NIST guide for developing such a document is at 
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-30-rev1/sp800_30_r1.pdf. 
No one person can come up with this and it would take buy in from 
several different people who have expertise in specific technical areas 
as well as experts in coming up with test plans.  I recently suggested 
to the people running the MIT lab that they look into developing a 
program along those lines.  Gavin also recently suggested that list of 
Bitcoin metrics be developed to help resolve the current disputes.  I 
can help develop this process if there is interest.

Russ

On 6/18/2015 11:46 AM, Wladimir J. van der Laan wrote:
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>> This kind of thing always happens as projects become larger and more
>> diverse.  Something that was once a small group turns into a big
>> group of diverse stakeholders.  When it gets too big for the
>> informal processes then some people get upset and defensive. Happens
>> all the time but it is not really a good excuse to keep doing things
>> in an inefficient manner.  The old ways just don't scale and if you
>> ever worked on massive projects then you know these formal processes
>> work better.
> So then: make a proposal for a better process, post it to this list.
>
> In practice there has been zero interest in improving the BIP process.
>
> E.g. the BIP process was adapted from the Python Enhancement Proposals by Amir Taaki (in 2009 or so?). It hasn't really changed since then, apart from some spelling and grammar corrections. It is not specifically adapted to Bitcoin, and doesn't make a distinction between for example, consensus changes and non-consensus changes.
>
> So that's up to someone to do. You seem to be enthousiastic about it, so go ahead.
>
> Wladimir
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