On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 1:42 PM, Alex Morcos wrote: > Let me take a pass at explaining how I see this. > > 1) Code changes to Bitcoin Core that don't change consensus: Wladimir is > the decider but he works under a process that is well understood by > developers on the project in which he takes under reasonable consideration > other technical opinions and prefers to have clear agreement among them. > Yes. 2) Changes to the consensus rules: As others have said, this isn't anyone's > decision for anyone else. > Yes. > It's up to each individual user as to what code they run and what rules > they enforce. So then why is everyone so up in arms about what Mike and > Gavin are proposing if everyone is free to decide for themselves? I > believe that each individual user should adhere to the principle that there > should be no changes to the consensus rules unless there is near complete > agreement among the entire community, users, developers, businesses miners > etc. It is not necessary to define complete agreement exactly because every > individual person decides for themselves. I believe that this is what > gives Bitcoin, or really any money, its value and what makes it work, that > we all agree on exactly what it is. So I believe that it is misleading and > bad for Bitcoin to tell users and business that you can just choose without > concern for everyone else which code you'll run and we'll see which one > wins out. No. You should run the old consensus rules (on any codebase you > want) until you believe that pretty much everyone has consented to a change > in the rules. It is your choice, but I think a lot of people that have > spent time thinking about the philosophy of consensus systems believe that > when the users of the system have this principle in mind, it's what will > make the system work best. > I don't think I agree with "pretty much everybody", because status-quo bias is a very powerful thing. Any change that disrupts the way they've been doing things will generate significant resistance -- there will be 10 or 20% of any population that will take a position of "too busy to think about this, everything seems to be working great, I don't like change, NO to any change." For example, I think some of the resistance for bigger blocks is coming from contributors who are worried they, personally, won't be able to keep up with a bigger blockchain. They might not be able to run full nodes from their home network connections (or might not be able to run a full node AND stream Game of Thrones), on their old raspberry pi machines. The criteria for me is "clear super-majority of the people and businesses who are using Bitcoin the most," and I think that criteria is met. > 3) Code changes to Core that do change consensus: I think that Wladimir, > all the other committers besides Gavin, and almost all of the other > developers on Core would defer to #2 above and wait for its outcome to be > clear before considering such a code change. > Yes, that's the way it has mostly been working. But even before stepping down as Lead I was starting to wonder if there are ANY successful open source projects that didn't have either a Benevolent Dictator or some clear voting process to resolve disputes that cannot be settled with "rough consensus." -- -- Gavin Andresen