Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] This thread is not about the soft/hard fork technical debate

From: s7r <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2015 20:33:04 +0300

Hello,

First, this only makes reference to hard forks not to soft forks. This
is very important because we are trying to apply a hard fork
requirement to a soft fork procedure which obviously won't work.

Your statement that 'all objections coming from anyone must be
addressed until that person agrees' is not applicable in reality. What
if that person objecting is explained several times, with plausible
and verifiable technical arguments, and that person still doesn't
agree (either on purpose, either really doesn't understand the
explanations)? What will we do in this case? Assume it's controversial
because someone refuses to or simply doesn't understand? This seams at
least a little bit unfair.

It's like we are in a court room where a text from a law (like this
requirement from that BIP) can be twisted and interpreted in various
way in an endless debate. We cannot apply everything as-it-is-stated
word-by-word and apply it _blindly_ like robots in every situation,
everything always depends on context and other factors.

For example, I don't see this controversial nor a violation of the BIP
requirements. Mike had some fair objections, they were explained by
gmaxwell and Jorge, everybody understood. The explanation is clear,
with plausible practical examples, so from my point of view the
objections have no arguments to sustain the claim. I don't see
anything controversial here. Now of course it's Mike's right to reject
those explanations, but what's the 'controversial' here?

On 10/5/2015 6:56 PM, Sergio Demian Lerner via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> Some of the people on this mailing list are blindly discussing the 
> technicalities of a soft/hard fork without realizing that is not
> Mike's main intention. At least I perceive (and maybe others too)
> something else is happening.
> 
> Let me try to clarify: the discussion has nothing to do with
> technical arguments. I generally like more hard forks than soft
> forks (but I won't explain why because this is not a technical
> thread), but for CLTV this is quite irrelevant (but I won't explain
> why..), and I want CLTV to be deployed asap.
> 
> Mike's intention is to criticize the informal governance model of 
> Bitcoin Core development and he has strategically pushed the
> discussion to a dead-end where the group either:
> 
> 1) ignores him, which is against the established criteria that all 
> technical objections coming from anyone must be addressed until
> that person agrees, so that a change can be uncontroversial. If the
> group moves forward with the change, then the "uncontroversial"
> criteria is violated and then credibility is lost. So a new
> governance model would be required for which the change is within
> the established rules.
> 
> 2) respond to his technical objections one after the other, on
> never ending threads, bringing the project to a standstill.
> 
> As I don't want 2) to happen, then 1) must happen, which is what
> Mike wants. I have nothing for or against Mike personally. I just
> think Mike Hearn has won this battle. But having a more formal
> decision making process may not be too bad for Bitcoin, maybe it
> can actually be good.
> 
> Best regards from a non-developer to my dearest developer friends, 
> Sergio.
>