<oembed><type>rich</type><version>1.0</version><author_name>npub1rv5ajnhgrc0wq3ulrk6tcjkgsaq8h4rs5rtsvrnklz4j0lw40egqphc5wt</author_name><author_url>https://nostr.ae/npub1rv5ajnhgrc0wq3ulrk6tcjkgsaq8h4rs5rtsvrnklz4j0lw40egqphc5wt</author_url><provider_name>njump</provider_name><provider_url>https://nostr.ae</provider_url><html>📅 Original date posted:2015-06-25&#xA;📝 Original message:&#34;Cultish&#34; means making claims without any supporting facts.  Labeling &#xA;Open Source software as being &#34;decentralized&#34; just because people can &#xA;choose which version to run is a &#34;cultish&#34; claim.  Just because Bitcoin &#xA;uses the mining process to come to consensus over the state of the &#xA;ledger that does not mean the software versions have the same level of &#xA;decentralization because users can decide which version to run. I am in &#xA;the USA and I can vote in elections but I would not call the US &#xA;government &#34;decentralized.&#34;  It is a very complicated issue and cannot &#xA;be explained in one or two sentences of hand-waiving arguments like you &#xA;often see here.&#xA;&#xA;Russ&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;On 6/25/2015 3:51 AM, cipher anthem wrote:&#xA;&gt; +1 on this!&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; I have come across Milly a couple of times on reddit and disqus and &#xA;&gt; she basically dismisses anyone who doesn&#39;t agree with her opinions. &#xA;&gt; always labeling them &#34;cultish&#34;. Please ignore her so you can stay &#xA;&gt; productive.&#xA;&gt; *Sent:* Thursday, June 25, 2015 at 5:07 AM&#xA;&gt; *From:* &#34;Jeff Garzik&#34; &lt;jgarzik at gmail.com&gt;&#xA;&gt; *To:* bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org&#xA;&gt; *Subject:* Re: [bitcoin-dev] BIP Process and Votes&#xA;&gt; Ladies &amp; gents, please do not feed the troll. This has been explained &#xA;&gt; to Milly multiple times in the past, on previous mailing list &amp; github &#xA;&gt; with no impact.&#xA;&gt; On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 7:34 PM, Milly Bitcoin &lt;milly at bitcoins.info&gt; &#xA;&gt; wrote:&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;     I&#39;m sorry but that is the kind of defensive, cultish response&#xA;&gt;     everyone gets when they ask that question.  If you had a well&#xA;&gt;     constructed documented process then you would be able to point to&#xA;&gt;     it ... but you can&#39;t. While there are a few bits and pieces&#xA;&gt;     scattered  about in different places there is no coherent plan or&#xA;&gt;     process.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;     It is easy to make statements like &#34;consensus must be unanimous&#34;&#xA;&gt;     but the issue is that you never have true 100% consensus yet you&#xA;&gt;     have to move forward in some fashion and everyone has to run&#xA;&gt;     software with the same consensus rules.  The issue is how you move&#xA;&gt;     forward is the question that nobody wants to answer because (a) it&#xA;&gt;     is a hard question to answer and (b) developers see it as a threat&#xA;&gt;     to their authority/position.  If people just keep shutting down&#xA;&gt;     the discussion with a bunch of cultish stock answers then you are&#xA;&gt;     never going to move forward with developing some kind of process.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;     &gt;From what I can see much of the discussion is personality-driven&#xA;&gt;     and not based on Computer Science or and defined process.  The&#xA;&gt;     issue is that a personality has changed so the process is&#xA;&gt;     perceived to be different and some people want to hard fork. &#xA;&gt;     Previously, the cultish answer is that Bitcoin development is&#xA;&gt;     decentralized because people can fork the code.  Now that some&#xA;&gt;     developers want to fork the code suddenly it is a big problem.  &#xA;&gt;     Is forking the code part of the consensus process or is it the&#xA;&gt;     work of the devil?   The fact that there is so much diverse&#xA;&gt;     opinion on this shows a defined process has never been fully&#xA;&gt;     vetted or understood.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;     I have worked on these processes for many years for projects&#xA;&gt;     orders of magnitudes larger than Bitcoin.  I can absolutely assure&#xA;&gt;     you the current mishmash does not scale and huge amounts of time&#xA;&gt;     are wasted.  That should be readily apparent from the recent&#xA;&gt;     discussions and the recent concern it has caused from people&#xA;&gt;     outside the developer&#39;s inner circle.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;     Lack of defined process = high risk and wasted effort.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;     Russ&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;     On 6/24/2015 9:50 PM, Mark Friedenbach wrote:&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;         I&#39;m sorry but this is absolutely not the case, Milly. The&#xA;&gt;         reason that people get defensive is that we have a carefully&#xA;&gt;         constructed process that does work (thank you very much!) and&#xA;&gt;         is well documented. We talk about it quite often in fact as it&#xA;&gt;         is a defining characteristic of how bitcoin is developed which&#xA;&gt;         differs in some ways from how other open source software is&#xA;&gt;         developed -- although it remains the same in most other ways.&#xA;&gt;         Changes to the non-consensus sections of Bitcoin Core tend to&#xA;&gt;         get merged when there are a few reviews, tests, and ACKs from&#xA;&gt;         recognized developers, there are no outstanding objections,&#xA;&gt;         and the maintainer doing the merge makes a subjective&#xA;&gt;         judgement that the code is ready.&#xA;&gt;         Consensus-changes, on the other hand, get merged into Bitcoin&#xA;&gt;         Core only after the above criteria are met AND an extremely&#xA;&gt;         long discussion period that has given all the relevant&#xA;&gt;         stakeholders a chance to comment, and no significant&#xA;&gt;         objections remain. Consensus-code changes are unanimous. They&#xA;&gt;         must be.&#xA;&gt;         The sort of process that exists in standards bodies for&#xA;&gt;         example, with working groups and formal voting procedures, has&#xA;&gt;         no place where changes define the nature and validity of other&#xA;&gt;         people&#39;s money. Who has the right to reach into your pocket&#xA;&gt;         and define how you can or cannot spend your coins? The premise&#xA;&gt;         of bitcoin is that no one has that right, yet that is very&#xA;&gt;         much what we do when consensus code changes are made. That is&#xA;&gt;         why when we make a change to the rules governing the nature of&#xA;&gt;         bitcoin, we must make sure that everyone is made aware of the&#xA;&gt;         change and consents to it.&#xA;&gt;         Everyone. Does this work? Does this scale? So far, it does.&#xA;&gt;         Uncontroversial changes, such as BIP 66, are deployed without&#xA;&gt;         issue. Every indication is that BIP 66 will complete&#xA;&gt;         deployment in the very near future, and we intend to repeat&#xA;&gt;         this process for more interesting changes such as BIP65:&#xA;&gt;         CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY.&#xA;&gt;         This isn&#39;t about no one stepping forward to be the &#34;decider.&#34;&#xA;&gt;         This is about no one having the right to decide these things&#xA;&gt;         on the behalf of others. If a contentious change is proposed&#xA;&gt;         and not accepted by the process of consensus, that is because&#xA;&gt;         the process is doing its job at rejecting controversial&#xA;&gt;         changes. It has nothing to do with personality, and everything&#xA;&gt;         to do with the nature of bitcoin itself.&#xA;&gt;         On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 5:07 PM, Milly Bitcoin&#xA;&gt;         &lt;milly at bitcoins.info&gt; wrote:&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;             I have seen this question asked many times.  Most&#xA;&gt;             developers become defensive and they usually give a very&#xA;&gt;             vague 1-sentence answer when this question is asked. It&#xA;&gt;             seems to be it is based on personalities rather than any&#xA;&gt;             kind of definable process.  To have that discussion the&#xA;&gt;             personalities must be separated out and answers like&#xA;&gt;             &#34;such-and-such wouldn&#39;t do that&#34; don&#39;t really do much to&#xA;&gt;             advance the discussion.  Also, the incentive for new&#xA;&gt;             developers to come in is that they will be paid by&#xA;&gt;             companies who want to influence the code and this should&#xA;&gt;             be considered (some developers take this statement as an&#xA;&gt;             insult when it is just a statement of the incentive process).&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;             The other problem you are having is the lead developer&#xA;&gt;             does not want to be a &#34;decider&#34; when, in fact, he is a&#xA;&gt;             very significant decider. While the users have the&#xA;&gt;             ultimate choice in a practical sense the chief developer&#xA;&gt;             is the &#34;decider.&#34;  Now people don&#39;t want to get him upset&#xA;&gt;             so nobody wants to push the issue or fully define the&#xA;&gt;             process.  Now you are left with a broken,&#xA;&gt;             unwritten/unspoken process.  While this type of thing may&#xA;&gt;             work with a small group of developers businesses/investors&#xA;&gt;             looking in from the outside will see this as a risk.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;             Until you get passed all the personality-based arguments&#xA;&gt;             you are going to have a tough time defining a real process.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;             Russ&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;             On 6/24/2015 7:41 PM, Raystonn wrote:&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;                 I would like to start a civil discussion on an&#xA;&gt;                 undefined, or at least unwritten, portion of the BIP&#xA;&gt;                 process.  Who should get to vote on approval to commit&#xA;&gt;                 a BIP implementation into Bitcoin Core? Is a simple&#xA;&gt;                 majority of these voters sufficient for approval?  If&#xA;&gt;                 not, then what is?&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;                 Raystonn&#xA;&gt;                 _______________________________________________&#xA;&gt;                 bitcoin-dev mailing list&#xA;&gt;                 bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org&#xA;&gt;                 https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;             _______________________________________________&#xA;&gt;             bitcoin-dev mailing list&#xA;&gt;             bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org&#xA;&gt;             https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;     _______________________________________________&#xA;&gt;     bitcoin-dev mailing list&#xA;&gt;     bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org&#xA;&gt;     https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; _______________________________________________ bitcoin-dev mailing &#xA;&gt; list bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org &#xA;&gt; https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; _______________________________________________&#xA;&gt; bitcoin-dev mailing list&#xA;&gt; bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org&#xA;&gt; https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev&#xA;&#xA;-------------- next part --------------&#xA;An HTML attachment was scrubbed...&#xA;URL: &lt;http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20150625/51d968ab/attachment-0001.html&gt;</html></oembed>