Author: Michael Folkson 2023-05-07 07:03:02
Published on: 2023-05-07T07:03:02+00:00
Bitcoin Core has proposed a new maintainer, ryanofsky, who has received multiple ACKs in the recent Core dev IRC meeting. However, the decision to add a new maintainer was made privately by existing maintainers who believed that ryanofsky was a good fit for someone who understood interfaces and modularization efforts well. Some have expressed concern that the decision-making process for adding new maintainers is controlled by current maintainers without input from others. Additionally, there seems to be inconsistency in the requirements for becoming a maintainer, as Andrew Chow justified blocking Vasil Dimov based on a need for maintainers to give final reviews before merging, but it is unclear if ryanofsky has exhibited this behavior as well. The lack of communication and transparency in merge decisions has been an ongoing issue in Bitcoin Core. Maintainers often do not provide commentary on why they merge or don't merge pull requests, leaving authors frustrated and confused. While some previous maintainers were responsive on IRC and willing to discuss their decisions, some of the current maintainers are unresponsive and refuse to discuss merge decisions, even in cases where there are many ACKs from other maintainers and long term contributors. This lack of communication can create problems, such as when a contentious soft fork activation attempt was pursued despite many NACKs from non-long term contributors, leading to confusion about support for the attempt among casual observers. While there are concerns about the transparency and accountability of the maintainers in Bitcoin Core and bitcoin-inquisition/default signet, it is acknowledged that there is also a need to prevent outright malicious actors from interfering with the projects. The author suggests that more transparency and accountability is necessary in merge decisions or else investment in consensus compatible forks may be necessary. On a positive note, there does seem to be more energy and momentum for collaboration and open communication in the project since previous discussions on communication.
Updated on: 2023-06-16T17:31:30.049719+00:00