Author: Milly Bitcoin 2015-06-25 14:08:51
Published on: 2015-06-25T14:08:51+00:00
The Bitcoin consensus rules are not separated out so one person decides whether the "rough consensus" has been reached and if the consensus rules should be changed. The final decision should probably not fall into the lap of one person but it does for now and that is just the way it is because there is no better way to do it if we want to get things done. It's not about any personality involved or whether they do a good or bad job. Once you define the process, the lack of a defined process causes wasted time and effort. A defined process will give more assurance for commercial entities to bring more developers on board as the developer system transitions into a paid system where commercial entities hire developers then there is no incentive for them to do that if changes can never be made. Regarding the approval to commit a BIP implementation into Bitcoin Core, who should get to vote on approval? Is a simple majority of these voters sufficient for approval? If not, then what is? This undefined, or at least unwritten, portion of the BIP process needs to be discussed in a civil manner. In the Bitcoin project, unlike any other open source projects which can just be forked, without affecting the other users, we need all the users to trust a single blockchain, so it'll have value. There is economics involved here and human element, things which are hard to fix via code, even if the code is developed in open source style. The lead developer does not want to be a "decider" when, in fact, he is a very significant decider. While the users have the ultimate choice in a practical sense the chief developer is the "decider." Until the personality-based arguments are passed, it will be tough to define a real process.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T00:54:14.610580+00:00