Author: Mike Hearn 2015-06-18 10:00:17
Published on: 2015-06-18T10:00:17+00:00
The author of the statement believes that running a codebase for Bitcoin Core, or any project for that matter, cannot be done like Wikipedia. Maintainers have to take part in debates and make decisions, and those who were delegated commit access must respect those decisions for the project to progress at a reasonable pace. This is not a radical position and is how nearly all coding projects work. In some large codebases, subsystems may have delegated submaintainers. The author's own projects are run this way with multiple people having commit access. However, if there were to be a design dispute or disagreement, the author would not tolerate others with commit access starting a "Wiki-style edit war" in the code. Nor would they expect to get their own way in other people's projects by threatening to revert the maintainer's changes. The author also notes that Bitcoin Core is in a unique position where there is no decision-making ability because anyone who shows up and creates enough controversy can block any change, regardless of whether they have commit access or not. Some people may think this anti-process leads to better decision making, but the author disagrees, stating that it leads to no decision making at all.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T23:29:58.481955+00:00