Author: 21E14 2014-12-18 05:56:18
Published on: 2014-12-18T05:56:18+00:00
This article discusses the challenges and complexities involved in open source development, using Bitcoin Core as a case study. The author talks about the difficulty of understanding the Bitcoin Core threading model, platform support, libification, dependency management, core data structures, DoS mitigation, script evolution, scalability roadmap, and suggests that this may be a bottleneck to address. The article encourages readers to look at the C# Language Design Notes on codeplex for further information.The article then talks about the importance of openness and transparency in open source development, and how disagreements among developers can play out in public forums. The author emphasizes the need to assume good faith and pay attention to the engineers actually working on the technology rather than the noise bubbling around the internet.The author then addresses concerns about changes made during the 0.10 development cycle of Bitcoin Core, which some users saw as introducing consensus bug risks. The author argues that the changes were performed responsibly, with multiple developers verifying each cosmetic change, and that the general direction of the work was towards creating a "libconsensus" library that encapsulates consensus code in a manner usable by external projects.Finally, the article discusses the concept of "social debt", or the added costs incurred by developers who must bear the costs of updating their unmerged work due to constant code movement and refactoring changes. The author argues that while such changes are necessary for a cleaner codebase, they can discourage developers from working on the tree. The article suggests developing policies that balance the need for refactoring with the needs of developers working on more involved Bitcoin Core projects.The context provided is an email sent to the Bitcoin-development mailing list, which can be subscribed to through the given link. It is likely that this mailing list is used as a platform for discussing and collaborating on Bitcoin-related projects and advancements.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T14:54:02.906804+00:00