Bitcoin is not really open source. Why not?

[davis196]

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.

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?

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[deisik]

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?

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)

[aso118]

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?

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. These are 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 quiet a lot of software applications that are closed-source but nevertheless free for individual 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.

[DooMAD]

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?

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.

[deisik]

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?

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

[DooMAD]

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?

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.

[deisik]

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?

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