BIP Process and Votes

Summary:

In an email thread on the Bitcoin developer mailing list hosted by the Linux Foundation, there is a discussion about the power dynamics of bitcoin development decision-making. Milly Bitcoin argues that one person has the power to revoke commit privileges and ultimately control bitcoin development decision-making. However, Patrick Murck points out that this is not entirely true as the Core Maintainer, Wladimir, has no more or less power than any other person with GitHub commit privileges, and commits can be reverted by any of the others as part of technical consensus before they are merged.Milly Bitcoin argues that the core developers have tremendous influence to veto any changes and that the whole Bitcoin software development system is subject to attack from just a couple of people who have this veto power. She considers it a significant power to have control over the official release at present, and if the core developers did not have such significant power, people would not spend significant efforts lobbying them to make changes.The discussion also touches on the issue of outside influences and stake of the developer, which is relevant in the context of miners, users, merchants, and exchanges. Milly Bitcoin thinks that some kind of process needs to be developed that does not involve trying to convince one person to make the changes or a system that depends on unwritten, ever-changing rules maintained by a handful of people.On the other hand, Patrick Murck thinks that seeking consensus is the best process they have for now, although the definition of "uncontroversial" is very vague, and any other "formal process" would imply centralization in the decision making of the consensus rules.Overall, the Bitcoin developer mailing list is a platform for developers to discuss and collaborate on the development of Bitcoin technology. It is a space where discussions on power dynamics and decision-making processes take place.

Updated on: 2023-06-10T00:52:20.484713+00:00