I'll be blunt: I think Luke Dashjr fits the definition of a poisonous person, and I think Bitcoin would be better without him. At the very least, we wouldn't be creating two BIPs for every technical issue, one for Luke and one for the rest of us (see BIP 16/17, and now we have BIP 20/21, too).
Sorry, but you're twisting this to an extreme. I'm "poisonous" because I don't agree with you, and don't want to see a damaging change adopted? BIP 20/21 dispute was created by Matt, not me.
The P2SH dispute would end easily if you would accept BIP 17, just as easily as it would end if I accept BIP 16. You are the
only developer dead-set against BIP 17, and for mere fear of the unknown, not real tangible things that people can solve (though I thank you for solving the sigop-counting issue that was once a tangible reason). It doesn't have to be BIP 17 that gets adopted; if someone has a better solution, that's fine by me. However, BIP 16 is
not that: it changes more (and
should be given more "fear of unknown" than BIP 17). Also, what a poisonous person would have done is simply argue against BIP 16, without providing any suggestions for improving it; I have gone to the work to provide a viable alternative - I have not only pointed out the problems, but also
solved them.
The major downside of BIP 17 appears to be that its code is less-tested and less-reviewed.
FWIW,
BIP 17 has actually completed more of the QA tests (chosen by Gavin) than BIP 16 has, and as it is a much simpler change, can easily be reviewed by anyone competent in C++ (
patches).
In the longer run, I feel it might boil down to losing one of them (at least from the core team) over this disagreement. It's easy for us to ask them to sort it out peacefully, but sometimes different personality types just don't get along and shouldn't work together.
I've tried to sort it out peacefully, but it always seems to come down to Gavin not wanting to "waste" his time discussing it. At this point, since he has made it clear his concerns are over the unknown, there's probably not much I could do anyway, since the unknown is ... unknown. :/
I'd like to see a video of Luke to see how really socially normal he is.
I keep suggesting those of us in the Tampa area meet up sometime, but it hasn't quite happened yet. Does that count? :p
As far as Gavin goes... my position is:
I'm fine with Gavin keeping his leadership role. I don't think he should be turned into a dictator. I do thing spreading out his de facto authority is a good thing. I hope he doesn't leave the project over this. I don't think he's immune from biases. I don't think his decisions must be infallible. I respect his opinion as a competent developer.
Edit: To clarify, I'm not immune from biases, nor are my decisions infallible either. I am prepared to accept BIP 16's route should it get implemented (and have even prepared a step-forward should that happen), but that doesn't mean I want to give up on the better solution either.