Topic: How Open Source Projects Survive Poisonous People - page 3. (Read 29524 times)

The real reason is that they might be approaching stage 4 in their conflict (http://www.mediate.com/articles/jordan.cfm - german Wikipedia is better, but the english one has no article (yet))

I'd love to have a freeze of features for the bitcoin standard (not the bitcoin client!) until there are at least 2-3 other well developed implementations.

Just take a look at miners: First there were just few CPU mining programs, then GPU miners emerged, and current mining programs automatically even adjust fanspeed(!) to keep your card at a steady temperature. Similar with pool software: after some months with horribly inefficient php software, on one end bitcoind was patched to crank out more getworks, but on the other end also new pool software was developed that could talk to multiple bitcoinds, cache getworks, work more reliably with the long polling issue and so on - current pools are running on hardware that would have died with 1/10th the miners before.

Bitcoind itself however seems to be just one single software with no real competitors (yes, I know about bitcoinj) where many people complain a bit about this or that but noone dares/wants to implement their own version. Transactions are already now complex enough to implement, that it seems noone so far even dares to do another implementation.
I really don't want the current bitcoind to become the "Linux Kernel" that is so overly complex, that there's no freakin' way to implement it differently without designing something completely different.

What is really needed here, is some competition, so Gavin or other developers can discuss protocol changes with actually other developers who are on the same level, not having an issue of leadership in his own team. All that currently is happening makes it even harder for others to write their own client - already now you need quite a deep understanding of cryptography to even understand adresses etc., and transactions already now are a quite different beast.

TL,DR:
Before making the "Satoshi" bitcoind more complex or adding to the standard, create/foster alternative clients and some healthy competition in the "bitcoind" market!

Zero sarcasm on my side. There are "good hackers" aka white hats.
I don't know whether "Gavin is sufficiently qualified", or if there is such a thing. An extra eye is always good.

In any case, I'm sorry but I don't have time to organize this myself - this was just a suggestion.

It's not a matter of qualification. It's a complex, novel project with extreme needs in terms of security. It needs to go through the scrutiny of many experts for a long time.

I am so bad at detecting sarcasm on these boards.

You do know there is no such thing as a respectable white hat?

Don't take my word for it, a good reference can be found if you google the whiteh8 teachings of PHC and the chronicles of el8.

Cause ain't no such things as half-way crooks.

You guys don't think Gavin is sufficiently qualified? Interesting. I would say you were incorrect, but sure more eyes can't hurt.

Good idea. Who wants to volunteer to do the fundraising and organize this, and let me know how I can help?

I would help fund this. 

Can't we hire respectable white hats to do a professional audit (with pledges)?

I'm not sure I agree that these discuss cryptography.  They use cryptography indirectly, but so does my bank (on their website, SSL) when they introduce a new debit card or rewards program, which don't require reference to Mallory or Eve either (unless they are the models showing the vacations you can redeem the points for).  BIP 16 and 17 aren't proposed cryptographic changes and don't discuss mathematical problems, so expectation of a mathematical proof doesn't make any sense.

No one is more qualified as a peer than the developers and users of Bitcoin, any more than we should expect a mechanical engineer with a PhD and expertise building bridges should know more about fixing Acuras than the guy with a community college associates and 10 years experience at the Acura dealership.

Wow, some fresh air is welcome, wise words reeses

Thank you for that extremely relevant bit of information. That certainly disqualifies him from technical / project management discussion.

Bruce was convicted of fraud, he likes prostitutes, and his show is painfully slow.  Let's leave him out of this. 

+1

For what it's worth, when I sent Gavin that video to watch, I did not send it to him with Luke in mind.

It was more of an ironic self-deprecating statement because I'd assumed everyone had already seen it; and, having not actually contributed public code to bitcoind itself, was trying to convey that my objections to the adoption of either BIP16/17 weren't worth more than that of just a solo-miner (who can code) in terms of actual progress on the project.

The short timelines involved are just very uncomfortable for me given the "millions" of dollars of assets at stake here.

Bitcoin is no longer an experiment.

I agree. I don't know the merits of each BIP, but if I was to judge based on personality alone, then Luke would have to go.

On the other side, I wish you would take more time before implementing new features.

There is a reason Satoshi throws his weight behind Gavin, we might or might not know that reason.  I support Gavin.

Also, would be nice if we as a community can see how this plays out via webcam in a TV interview format.

Where is Bruce Wagner on this one?  This is great material for TV!

I also bet a lot of miners are zombies on botnets, where changing the pool might be infeasible (e.g. hardcoded), inconvenient (requiring testing and deploying a new payload to work with a new pool), or risky for the botnet owner (in terms of being detected or losing control over his zombies).  To the extent this is true, this would slow it even more.

3 days?  I think not.  The vast majority are not on these forums every day and don't have their ear to the ground.  Pools might lose a max of 20% of their hashing power by the end of 3 days.

Not quite correct.  The pools are comprised of voluntary membership, that can leave at any time.  If there is any kind of split, those pool operators cannot count upon maintaining their leveraged position longer than it takes for the news to spread across the community.  At most, a pool operator would have three days before the majority of his membership heard about the split, and then decided for themselves whether or not they agreed with their chosen pool's direction.  To be a pool operator is a position of temporary power.