Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin is not open source because only a relatively small cross section of Bitcoin users understand the programming.

I use Bitcoin Core for Windows found through the link at https://bitcoin.org/en/download. The name of the current version file that I download is "bitcoin-0.13.1-win64-setup.exe." The download screen says that the size of the file is 12.5 MB (megabytes). The Windows (zip) of the same program says it is 22.6 MB. I use the smaller of these two.

While I really don't know what the difference is between these downloads, the smaller of the two installed to my "Program Files" directory in my computer, at 41 MB. (The whole blockchain is well over 100 GB (gigabytes).)

Do you know how many lines of code you could write to fill 41 MB of computer hard drive memory? Thousands!

What do all these lines of code do? What do they do to your computer? How do they work with your Internet connection, and what is really being sent over the Internet when you have Bitcoin running? Is there really anybody who knows the whole thing?

The point is, Bitcoin is not really open source, because it is not open to the vast majority of minds that use it. The average person could understand the whole Encyclopedia Britannica easier than he could understand what goes on with the Bitcoin programming in his computer. And probably fewer than 99% of programmers understand it, to say nothing of lay people.

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EDIT:  I've really got to learn to stop responding to trolls.


I don't think you understand what the words "open source" mean.


I think it's on the order of hundreds of thousands.


They run the bitcoin protocol.


Display stuff on your screen. Accept input from your keyboard and mouse. Interact with your network interface to find peers and share information. validate transactions and blocks. Generate private keys. Encrypt your wallet.  Basically, all the things necessary to implement the bitcoin protocol AND operate as a bitcoin wallet.


Through well established protocols such as TCP/IP and UDP.


Transactions, blocks, version messages, basic protocol comuications.


Yes.


It is open to anyone and everyone that WANTS to take the time to learn it.  It is a voluntary system and nobody is FORCED to understand it if they don't want to.


Complete nonsense.


Any programmer that wants to understand it, has the opportunity to do so.  It isn't very complicated at all.

OP is having issues with:
updated documentation that actually explain it properly
code lacking comments.
signposting to the best source of code, comments, documentation.

though it is open source, the organisation of HOW its open is missing.
back in my day nearly every line of code had comments to explain what it does.
back in my day nearly every line of code had namespaces/variables with WORDS that explained what it does not just characters

there are many modules that do have comments and variables with understandable names. but there are some without.

EG https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/secp256k1/src/ecdsa_impl.h (grabbed randomly)
if you see a module assign variables 'b1' 'rs' 'rr' 's1' 'u1' 'u2' 'sn' 'pr' without commenting what they do. it helps no one.

yes with a couple re reads and running it through your mind in what used to be called 'pseudocode' you get the gist of it eventually. but its still badly organised

the funnier part is that many core devs get very snobby if forum posts are not wrote in 100% white paper approved level of English grammar, even when knowing forums are just for common/social communication where only 10% of the planet deem English to be their first language. but their own code lacks the basic coding etiquette

Ah! You, then, are one of the very few who understand the full extent of Qt programming in Bitcoin? All right! We have a winner. One person in thousands (hundreds 0f thousands) who understands Bitcoin programming. So, it is open source to you. I think that if you look at the full meaning of "open source," you will find that open source really says that it has to be available for understanding by anyone. Bitcoin source code is available for understanding only by a relatively few programmers.

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Thank you. This is much closer to the explanation that I was looking for.

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Open source means that anybody can access the whole source code. And this IS possible.
Documentation would be nice, documented lines would be great, a good programming style (including well chosen variable and function names) would be super, but you cannot really ask for this; quite a lot of production code lacks one or more of these points, quite a lot of open source projects lack one or more of these points.

Imho OP has a confusion on this matter. Open source doesn't mean teaching/learning code.

Yes, it would be nice to have that, but I don't think that it's Bitcoin Dev team's "job" to do that. It could be an idea for a side project/website though...

the dictionary definition of open source is that the code is not locked away in some vault that only available to authorised people.
BUT
the concept and context of bitcoins openness is that anyone should be able to get involved. which can actually be hindered by the ettiquete some devs have. especially if its required that their code should be peer reviewed.

this is how bugs happen. by not clearly laying out the code. people gloss over the code and just think. 'this guy looks like he knows what he is doing lets just let the code fly' and not actually reading line by line and running scenarios.

its already happened a couple times even after being so called 'peer reviewed'

When you have code that is not open source, it is still "open source" to the person or company who made it. If it was a company, a person might be able to get a job there, learn the "passwords" for accessing the code, and make it open source to himself.

A layman might download a simple program that will give him an open-source look at some, general programming. Or he might be able to figure out how to access and view the code in a simple text program. But it is still useless for him. It tells him nothing (except if their are instruction line built right into the code, as franky1 said). He still needs to learn programming to figure out what the program is doing.

The point is, the average person hears the term "open source." He doesn't realize that this term isn't as useful to him as it is suggested to be. Why? Because he still doesn't know what is going on in the program. Very few people really know, even though it is open source.

A programmer might be able to figure this stuff out. But even a programmer might not find hidden things that are going on in a multiple hundred thousand line program, without some in-depth study of the program. "Open source" just might be a term that some programmers use to allay the suspicions and fears of other programmers (and, of course, lay people), while they stick some code in that does a bunch of other things that nobody else knows, and that most people would not want if they knew it.

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Since you refer to a Windows executable, your download is a precompiled binary which most certainly includes a few libraries not available in Windows by default. Even if you have full understanding of the Bitcoin protocol and the development tools (including a programming language) with which this specific implementation of Bitcoin was built, you will still be using third party as well as operating system libraries and kernel calls (e.g. network stack calls), and you can't possibly know what exactly all these are doing to your computer, especially if you are using Windows...

In this way, your point is essentially moot (whatever you wanted to say)

You have a bad approach in talking about what you have in mind. You have some good points here and there but at the same time you are wrong about lots of other things for example Ubuntu Kernel is also Open source (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/SourceCode) or the same with Firefox (https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/51.0b6/) and all the things you say are true about millions of people who are using these.

Open source means anyone can go to the source code: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin looks at it and report publicly if he/she finds any shenanigans and also anyone can use the code to build their own code:
https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum
https://github.com/keepkey/multibit
https://github.com/etotheipi/BitcoinArmory
https://github.com/blockchain (blockchain.info)
....

What end users can do is either learn a programming language and read the code themselves or trust hundreds of others who are doing it.
https://i.imgur.com/G14dYp8.jpg

The part that is NOT moot is the fact that people need to realize this... that they are trusting all kinds of programmers all over the place, especially Microsoft.

The whole money system has slowly grown into an Internet thing, all run by computers and programming that isn't understood by anybody except the tiniest handful of programmers. The open source aspect of Bitcoin is little different, but not much.

How big is Windows 10 on the computer. Gigabytes. And much of it is NOT open source.

Probably a lot of people would be scared to no end if they realized what their computers are doing behind the scenes. The term "open-source" simply quells their fears, even though little open source programming is really understood by anyone, relatively.

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I feel soooo comfortable now that I realize that there are public programmers who have examined the whole Bitcoin Core programming in great detail, and would certainly broadcast it all over the Internet if they found anything wrong with it. I'm simply relieved.

To the general public, open source means nothing. All it does is make them feel comfortable, so that if there is a malicious programmer, he can attack them easier by saying that his program is open source.

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[from wikipedia] Open source as a development model promotes universal access via an open-source or free license to a product's design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint, including subsequent improvements to it by anyone. [end]

So you can see what's there is behind the code itself, this is way it's "open source".
Even [from wikipedia]  The open-source model is a more decentralized model of production, in contrast with more centralized models of development such as those typically used in commercial software companies.[1] Scientists view the open-source model as a case of open collaboration [end]

It's normal not all people could understand "the code" by itself, but this not means is not an open source code.
About malicious programmer there are some proposal that need to be validated before submitted:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Improvement_Proposals
Some proposal cannot be adopted: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Prohibited_changes

Probably with these BIP the protocol is safe, and only an hardfork (and another COINS not actual bitcoin) could help malicious programmer.

Well take "Windows" as a example... all the code is proprietary and not shared with the public, so you cannot call that Open Source. In my view all

the code is viewable and everyone with a sound programming knowledge, would have a clue what is written there. Enough people have more or less

an idea, what is inside the code, to verify that it does not contain any nasty surprises.  ;D .... People were quick to identify malicious code in Bitcoin

XT, when it revealed some "backdoors"  ;)

Yes, but it has been known for decades already

Even in totally open-sourced systems like Linux or FreeBSD you have no other option but to trust other people and their knowledge, since it is simply impossible to first understand and then check all types of software used in a modern computer. In fact, even if you have a full source code tree of some program or utility and understand every line of it (or developed it yourself), you can't be 100% sure that it will do exactly what you think it should (and I'm not talking about bugs)

Thank you. Good point.    8)

All that this says is that these programs, although called open source, are not really as open as the public might think that they are.

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Now you are going off-topic. You are comparing bitcoin (see the image I added (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1706425.msg17099680#msg17099680)) with a random malicious programmer's source code. Again you are using a correct fact to make a wrong conclusion.

Yes it is possible that a malicious programmer makes a code and fools people by only saying it is open source. I have already found 3 and reported them to GitHub and they were removed.

But what you say about malicious code is not possible about bitcoin that many are using and checking each commit's changes.

If any developer could post the results of this page: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/graphs/traffic I think it could answer many of your questions.


I (as a novice programmer) just want to confirm that this IS possible, not easy because of many custom variables and other complications but going through the documentation and code it is possible.

many do know programming languages. but if the code uses undescribed variables or just randomly selected characters as variables, where no comments describe what the function does.. it is a headache

there is a major difference between quickly reading code to see if it has any "kill commands" and reading it line by line to see what the code does.
it took many people alot of time to read line for line and translate it in their head into 'pseudocode' and then work out what a function does by simulating it. which all can be solved by some basic etiquette. most of the people that actually bother reading it line by line and do simulations are those that then make their own implementations that run better. due to the boysclub of core being close minded to outside criticism.

the issues arise when one coder does stuff that 'works' but does so in a fancy way which could have been done in other ways. though passing a review test, the peers are not simulating it to think of other ways it can be written. they just put their thumbs up and move on. 'trusting' the dev that wrote it.

there have been many times we have seen bitcoin toyed around with later purely because one function passed a review, but later finding out if a function was wrote differently it would work better.

just because 90 spell checkers put their thumbs up, doesnt mean the code is perfect. doesnt mean all 90 spell checkers have run simulations or thought of different strategies. most of they time they quickly browse the code doesnt have 'kill commands' and then "TRUST!!!!" the dev that wrote it knows what he is doing, thus resulting in a fake positive peer review

its why there are all the core fanboys throwing out doomsdays. they dont run real simlations or actually read code, they just read summaries and other peoples opinions and trust.. trust of one person who trusts another who trusts another even when all 3 have not read a line of code. makes things go wrong.

take a notable name in the forum.. Lauda.. he doesnt know C++ yet has been very vocal of his trust of core code and core devs. and people then trust him. all because the code is not laid out.

take the way devs implemented the tx fee.. not only subverting coded methods of 'priority' which would have alleviated the war, but also using 'averages' which dont make the fee's drop reactively when demand is low. but actually keeps fee's up. even when one block is low demand.
EG take a 25 block average.. imagine first 24 are 0.0001 and the 25th is 0.0025 then look at the 'average' after that.. even if demand was near 0 and no one was pushing the fee up.... the "average" itself pushes up
https://i.imgur.com/VCsbAiH.png

so although the tx fee passes 'peer review' its sloppily coded in a way that is not reactive to low demand. or cares about using code logic to show real priority. all its doing is pushing/maintaining a high price even when demand is low.

it requires pools to avoid using the 'average' and to accept cheap tx's just to break the cycle that the 'average' fee war game is playing.

Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean no one understands it. You can even compile it yourself on a shit windowz computer after looking at the code if you want to install 7z, perl, python and MinGW. I've been downloading and compiling my own client since it was on sourceforge. The only thing I disagree with about the current release is the retirement of the alert key. I can still see possible uses for it. Privileged users shouldn't be able to send messages on a decentralized system, bla bla, bullshit. There's always going to be "privileged" people responsible for code and telling dumbasses like BADecker there's a problem.

The problem really is that you don't want to learn anything BADecker. It's the same reason you still think the earth is flat.

You really need to look at the franky1 post above your post.    8)

I agree that with proper documentation things are much easier to understand. But the argument OP is making is not about documentation.

Also about sloppy coding, if you see this and know a much better way and also capable of coding, I am curious to know if you have ever done anything about it like opening an issue on GitHub or changing the code to that better way and submitting it through pull request?

I can't see franky1's posts. I ignored him long ago.

the boysclub usually ask you to discuss it with devs in IRC first. then join the mailing list. discuss it further and explain it in more detail and use the github only for final code.

unless its a spelling mistake you are usually met with many barriers and slaps to your face if you even hint there is an issue or a better way.

most objections to issues get shut down due to boysclub protection and rants about they know how things should be done while chest thumping they know better and to quietly tell outsiders to shut up go away and if you dont like it, fork off and play with an altcoin with their preferred code.

so although the code is open. to view. what is viewable it not always clear. and if you do translate it and see an issue. then trying to sort it or overcome their boysclub is met with what can only be described as the opposite to an open community

You've only franked yourself by doing that.    8)

The only reason I don't ignore you is that I find your ridiculous uninformed stone-aged bullshit amusing. I just find franky1's bullshit annoying.

As long as you can openly get the source code (say, from an official repository) they are

You may think up your own definitions of open-source as much as you please, but don't expect other people agreeing to stick with your understanding of the concept. If you are looking for sematic juggling in an effort to fit a square peg in a round hole, then more power to you, but you are on your own in this endeavor

If anything, that laughable incident only highlighted the concept raised in this thread.  People looked at the XT code, saw lines mentioning functions like fShouldBan (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=fShouldBan) and banscore (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=banscore) and naturally assumed that XT had "introduced" the possibility of banning or blacklisting.  When, in fact, the "offending" code is right there in Core's repo and any node on the network could be banning or blacklisting peers as they see fit right now.  To the average onlooker, it's clear as mud.  People are very easily misled over this sort of thing and I find it amusing that some people still think that code is malicious after all this time.

I kinda feel sorry for you. You have to ignore someone to keep from perusing his post? Don't you even have enough self-control just to scroll on by? By placing somebody on ignore, you are only ignoring yourself and your true needs. Tell your psychiatrist about your problem. He might be able to recommend a suitable funny farm. Maybe the same one notbatman and nomadxxxxxx are at.

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I commend your clever way of saying this. I really am not all that clever at saying things like this. Have you considered a job as a politician?

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Yeah, I could scroll on by sweetie but his posts are freakishly large for saying absolutely nothing valuable at all. I just find it makes the thread two thirds smaller if I ignore him. You're cute though. Thanks for worrying about my welfare.

dont worry about "question authority". he stopped questioning authority years ago, now he just seems to accept authority.

open source simply mean that anyone can have access to the source of the code, not that you need to be a programmer to learn bitcoin, i can compile the client for example, this alone imply that bitcoin is open source, what is so hard to understand here?

The funny farm will give him more freedom.

I never placed anyone on ignore. I was curious. Are the ignored persons posts invisible inside another person's post during a reply?

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Right?
Seven and a half years and this still needs to be explained constantly. Bitcoin IS open source software.

i feel the op is talking about the whole bitcoin openness trustless ethos. more so then the literal meaning of "opensource"

I think that's right. It is confusing because the term has a specific meaning already. It is not open in the same way that some advanced mathematics is not open to me because I don't understand it. But I don't blame the math, I could take the time to learn it. Not to speak for BADecker, but I think he means that bitcoin is hard for non-technical users to understand. Like a lot of things in this modern world.

Then perhaps he should consider actually saying that instead of Trolling with an obvious Flame attempt.

If he wants more people to understand, and he wants the code to be more descriptive, then he either needs to teach and code, or he needs to hire someone to teach and hire someone to code.  These things don't happen if nobody does them.

Specifically BECAUSE it's open source...  If you don't like it, you can fix it (or pay someone else to do it for you).  Complaining without action is futile.

the word "open source" was applied for bitcoin network and do not expect it to tell you the full programming of a bitcoin wallet and if it did then the wallet will not be secured anymore

The security of a Bitcoin wallet doesn't come from any secrecy of its code. I would say a wallet with any secret code cannot be assumed to be secure.

The entirety of the Bitcoin download can be reproduced by anyone and in fact the release process requires many different people to reproduce the binaries exactly from source on their own.

Just because you dont understand the code dos not mean that bitcoin is not open source ???

No. The reason is because few people understand open source. Rather, they think that it means security (at least to some extent) when it doesn't mean nearly the security that they think it does.

The only Only ONLY thing that keeps Bitcoin secure is, the good intentions of the devs.

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I'm fine with that. I've never had a problem with email, have you? I sure as hell don't know how my microwave works, should I call black and decker and ask them if it's open source?


That's illogical. Just because you can't understand the language(for lack of a better term) it's written in doesn't mean it's not open source.

Google it:

"Denoting software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified."

If you want to be able to contribute to bitcoin then maybe take a class or try to educate yourself some other way. Also if you want to compete and make a better microwave I'd say you'd better figure out how they work too.

Well the CEO of bitcoin is going to sue all the alt-coins for using his code. joking. The fact there are so many forks is proof that is open source.

Bitcoin is open source and that is why there are many altcoins that copies bitcoin and tried to modify it. That is just one fact. Though I am not one of the few that understand the source codes and that makes my opinion as only a hypothesis without someone knowledgeable to back-up my claims.

Well, to stop the arguments we must ask the few individuals that has full understanding and knowledge about open source, source codes and etc. So we can have a technical and close to truth answer.

double wrong. it is open source because everyone has access to the code. understanding it has nothing to do with being open source or not.

and the security also has nothing to do with intentions of the devs. if anything malicious is injected at some point it is going to get caught fast. bitcoin wasn't built yesterday it has been nearly 7 years.

I guess its a bit like a Rolls Royce Jet Engine, they take the cover off it and you can see all the bits inside it, they even invite you to pull it apart and put it back together in your own way, did somebody forget to explain how it all works including mechanical engineering, fluid dynamics, thermal dynamics and maybe the laws of physics, anything technical takes "Your" time to filter into your pea brain and it's nobody's fault that technically it is quite an accomplishment and nobody's fault that they don't convert it into Duplo blocks just for you. People think thru an entire concept with all the technical tools thrown in there at their disposal, you need to understand the tools first.
Anybody else's uncompiled source code is hard to follow even when it is quite documented as you don't understand always what they were thinking or why they would want to do a certain thing or perhaps some think a lot of what they see is unnecessary.
I find it hard to follow my own undocumented source code as well as some that I took the time to put comments on. Commenting takes time if you are intending to have someone else understand your thinking.
While I am a programmer who has never looked at the said source code, it would discover that "it is" open source and I would be pretty amazed that I was able to have it all in that format, then I would begin my long long journey of understanding the literature.
I guess open source "English Language" is only when you know how to speak, read and write it, at the beginning knowing English at all, what was it? Some effort I would say but certainly no secret.
Why don't you try a programming language to understand why your expectations are kindergarten like, I'd suggest GWBASIC would be perfect for you !

Your entire argument is based on the thesis that everyone who doesn't understand the code, start to finish, makes the entirety of the course code no longer open source.

How do you even break it down so people can understand it in the same way? You can't. You can't have code explain itself, you have to go and see it for yourself.

I hope this is some kind of bait, because this makes absolutely zero sense as to how it can be a topic to discuss.

....and the ones that bother to learn coding.
It's open if you put some effort into it.
I guess to someone that lives in the iron age it seems like magic

Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks; managing transactions and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network. Bitcoin is open-source;its design is public, nobody owns or controls bitcoin and everyone can take part. Through many of its unique properties, Bitcoin allows exciting uses that could not covered by any previous payment system.

I read almost all the answers had given above to OP. I would like to answer him asking some questions:

Since OP considers that bitcoin is not open source software which according his opinion is open?
Suppose that bitcoin is not open source. What he proposes to do? Stop using it and return to fiat money only? Maybe using an alt coin? Something else?

W  T  F

 >:(


so linux isn't open source ? how many people understand kernel programming ?

so decss wasn't open source ? decrypting DVDs isnt something everyone understands.


This motherfucker is pretty much saying that Spanish isn't a REAL language because he doesn't speak it.


Bitcoin is open source .. your argument is not logical.

So what happens to bitcoin if the devs switch to bad intentions for example ? I have heard bitcoin is secured by the laws of universe which in my view are pretty secure but that sentence of yours is making me think , what if any of the insiders(devs) decides to destroy bitcoin by revealing bugs or implementing malwares and cracking the code of bitcoin ? What can the bitcoin community can do in such scenario to save bitcoin ?

There are roughly 100 people that have worked on bitcoin or are currently working on bitcoin and thousands more looking at the code. University professors have talked about it in lectures and reviewed the code attempting to criticize what it does. Dozens of businesses worldwide are currently reviewing the bitcoin blockchain to see if it's useful for their business. Do you honestly believe there's not one honorable person among them that would stand up and tell about the problems?

https://bitcoin.org/en/development

You have been utterly misinformed

The ones who matter are the Bitcoin miners. Whatever the devs might be up to, it will be irrelevant until the miners accept the changes proposed by the developers. And major changes and updates to Bitcoin should be agreed upon by the consensus of the miners, i.e. at least by 95% of them, if I'm not mistaken. So even if Bitcoin developers are up to something nasty, it has little-to-no chance of being accepted

You are totally wrong in your question, Bitcoin is really kind of an open source for everybody who are open minded on this kind of an opportunity. Just like what happen to me right now my mindset at the present time now was that bitcoin is my only job in my daily routine in life,

What do you care about bitcoin being open source or not? all you need is mining and then selling or just buying low and selling high.
Or you can spend 6 years to learn computer and programming.
Of course I know this same problem is why bitcoin never going to be trusted by general population.
Bitcoin is actually meant for 2 next generation and ones after them not in an era where people think God was a person and died for a few million people at that time.
Yes cryptocurrency is still too early for people to understand but even so bitcoin doing a hell of a job.

Does it really matter? And u are confusing by telling that 'open source' .well u can see all the transactions in the blockchain ,they can earn whatever they want .yah in case of dark market they are not so better they are just like ghosts .

Franky I have liked your previous posts just want to get that out of the way.

OP clearly as many posters are not able to articulate their points well in white paper English but yes I think I also can empathise with the issues inferred.

We can agree the code is open source, but not in the complete spirit of btc's core principles.

I have noticed as well on the sometimes elitist and auto-defensive attitudes of some who completely disregard any kind of idea that questions or criticises.

And that English is invariably brought into question is also another excluding factor.

Adoption, openness, inclusiveness and all that? *shrug*

i think if the OP wrote this topic as
'is bitcoin truly an open concept, open minded,' then people wouldnt attack the OP for the literal meaning of 'open source'
bitcoin has become very band-campy/boysclub. where it requires a hop, skip and a jump just to get a dev to not ignore you.
it then takes a few twerking/lapdances to convince the devs to try something different.

and if you tried to go at it alone. your slapped in the face and called an altcoin even if your code actually works on the mainnet

though the code is 'publicly available' the openness for contribution and allowing positive critisism to help bitcoin grow. seems to be equally met with doors shutting in your face. and rdirected through their maze of hops, skips and jumps.

let alone the publicly available source not being clearly laid out.
its much like saying court transcripts are publicly available. but what they hand you is wrote in short-hand. lacking human commenting/documentation

bitcoin is not really open community minded. unless your in the boysclub

If bitcoin wasn`t open source then would you pay $XXX amount of dollars or btc to buy that software

that you installed for free?

It`s open source to all the people who understand programming code and it`s free to download and use.

Do you want something more?

This requires a correction

If something is open source, it doesn't mean you can download and use it free of charge, especially if you are going to use it commercially. Such software is usually multi-licensed, e.g. Qt Development framework, which is distributed both under an open source license and a proprietary license. On the other hand, not for all closed-source software you should pay money. There are quite a lot of software applications that are closed source but nevertheless free for personal use (e.g. some VMware products)

The explanation of the word "free" should help. Free as in free speech and not free lunch.
The use of the term 'open source' was supposed to remove this confusion, but like in this case, it hasn't helped.

It's better to read the whole thread and not just the first post.  The complaint is effectively that although anyone can indeed look at the code, you absolutely need to be a coder to understand its effect.  Whereas in other open source projects, take for example phpBB forum software, the code is laid out and commented in such a way that even non-coders and the average enthusiast can easily modify the code and have a vague sense of what the code is actually doing.  I installed like 4 different mods on the forum I used to run and each mod involved copying and pasting chucks of code into specific sections of the existing code and tweaking other existing lines with different values.  I found this quite easy, even though I'm not a coder, because there was plain English every step of the way and you could easily tell what goes where and what each bit does.  In comparison, Bitcoin's code isn't sufficiently commented and there are some fairly significant sections where I have absolutely no idea what any of it means or does.  There is definitely room for improvement in that regard.

Just being an abstract software developer is not enough

You should also understand how particular algorithms work, but that is not related to software development as such, rather to mathematics. If you know basically nothing about cryptography, you will have a real trouble deducting what this or that chunk of code actually does, even if you are an experienced developer yourself. Code comments won't really help you very much in this case, since thoroughly commenting the code in the sense you mean it would amount to a thick book on cryptography supplied together with the source code. That you will study in computer science courses at a university. So your complaints about the Bitcoin code being poorly commented are largely unfounded

Okay, but naturally I'm assuming people who might want to modify the client wouldn't necessarily want to end up on their own personal fork, which is what could potentially happen if you start screwing around with the encryption.  Plus, it's reasonably fair to assume anyone looking to play with the encryption would hopefully have some idea what they're doing already.  Otherwise, what would the point be other than making a broken client?  I'm thinking more along the lines of someone who might not want to change the overall function of the client, but maybe tweak the user interface a bit.  Or add some new APIs to give additional information.  There are plenty of "cosmetic" changes users could be making to their clients if things were a touch clearer.  Who knows?  We might even encourage a budding mod community where all sorts of different plugins become available.

This has even less to do with Bitcoin developers as such and their comments

If you are talking about a Bitcoin client based on the Qt framework, I guess you can safely open it in QtCreator, which has an extensive and comprehensive help system built in, and make the required tweaks right there using this help. On the other hand, if you mean a command line client (I don't really know if it exists, so bear with me), then I don't know either what you are going to tweak there