On Thursday, September 08, 2011 12:51:02 PM Mike Hearn wrote:
> Bitcoin is one of the few pieces of software I use that has no concept of
> automatic updates or even notifications at all. Yet the network badly
> relies on people upgrading for stability, scalability and to enable new
> features.
>
> If the alert system goes away, it'd just end up being replaced by polling
> something over HTTP, which is less decentralized than before. Having zero
> way to communicate upgrades to end-users is a non-starter for anything
> serious about mass market penetration.

In fact, I think the alert system should relay (note, NOT display) messages
*regardless of the key used*, so it isn't yet another "our client gets special
status" thing, and can be used for other clients as well.