Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Bitcoin Classic 1.2.0 released

From: Eric Voskuil <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2017 16:32:25 -0800

On 01/07/2017 12:55 AM, Eric Lombrozo via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> Your release announcement does not make it clear that Bitcoin Classic is
> incompatible with the current Bitcoin network and its consensus rules.
> It is a hard fork on mainnet with no safe activation as well as
> including other unsafe changes. There is also no BIP for the hard fork.
> There is also no evidence of community wide consensus for such a hard
> fork. This is dangerous and irresponsible.

While I agree with the sentiment, to be fair one should acknowledge that
Bitcoin Core has intentionally implemented two hard forks since Nov
2015. The earlier is released, and I assume the latter will be.

Neither was subject to activation, or prior public debate (see Buried
Deployments threads):

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2016-November/thread.html

There was at least some internal discussion about whether a BIP should
document the latter having occurred, and that question was put to the list:

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2016-November/013275.html

Some have argued that these are inconsequential changes. I disagree, as
the arguments is base on provably invalid assumptions. Nevertheless, if
hard fork is the threshold criteria here, Core has not met it.

e