Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Bitcoin Core maintainers and communication on merge decisions

From: "David A. Harding" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 07 May 2023 07:35:52 -1000

On 2023-05-06 21:03, Michael Folkson via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> Essentially my concern is going forward current maintainers will
> decide which proposed new maintainers to add and which to block.

This is how a large percentage of organizations are run.  The current 
members of a board or other governance group choose who will become a 
new board member.

One alternative to self-perpetuating governance is membership voting, 
but building and maintaining democratic institutions is hard and not a 
good fit for many types of endeavors---the building of highly technical 
software being one of those cases IMO.

I think the questions we want to ask is whether the current set of 
maintainers is capable of moving Bitcoin Core in the direction we want 
and what we can do about it if we conclude that they are ill-suited (or 
malicious).  For the first question, I think that's something everyone 
needs to answer for themselves, as we may each have different visions 
for the future of the project.  That said, I note that several 
initiatives championed by the current maintainers in the IRC meeting you 
mention received overwhelmingly positive support from a significant 
number of current contributors, which seems like a healthy sign to me.

For the second question, I think AJ Towns already answered that quite 
well (though he was talking about a different project): 
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-April/021578.html

Finally, I don't think this matter warranted a post to this mailing 
list.  Discussion about internal project decisions, such as who should 
have merge access and what maintainers should communicate in PRs, belong 
in communication channels dedicated to that project.

-Dave