Excuse me if its a novice question but I really have no idea about it and would like to learn.
So we know that Satoshi created bitcoin, alone or with a team that we don't know(or do we?)
But now, as there are talks of making some changes or adjustments in the bitcoin(don't know if it has happened before or not), but who are gonna make those changes? Who are those developers that can do that?
And if it is open source, can a single person (or a few for that matter) make changes in it?
Would really appreciate some beginners guide on this.
Nobody owns the Bitcoin network much like no one owns the technology behind email. Bitcoin is controlled by all Bitcoin users around the world. While developers are improving the software, they can't force a change in the Bitcoin protocol because all users are free to choose what software and version they use. In order to stay compatible with each other, all users need to use software complying with the same rules. Bitcoin can only work correctly with a complete consensus among all users. Therefore, all users and developers have a strong incentive to protect this consensus.
https://bitcoin.org/en/faq#who-controls-the-bitcoin-networkAll users are free to choose what software or version they want to use. Adding some new rules to the existing protocol (core) is a soft fork while removing the existing rules is a hard fork. Now a hard fork isn't backwards compatible, users would be forced to use this version whether they like it or not.
These rules are called consensus rules because Bitcoin requires that all participants in the Bitcoin economy have consensus as to the consensus rules. If the economy disagrees about the consensus rules, then the currency and economy splits into two or more totally-independent pieces.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/ConsensusCould a single person make changes to it? Guess that's what is happening, bitcoin is open source, but with centralized mining the users doesn't have much choice.
As long as mining is conducted for economic gain, then any change adopted by the miners needs to be supported by the economic majority for it to be successfully implemented.
If there are changes to the protocol that are not welcomed by those who want bitcoins but the changes are adopted by miners regardless, then the coins mined (starting with the first non-compliant block mined) would not be recognized by those who didn't adopt all the changes. Thus those miners would then, in that instance, not gain economically from introducing any changes that the Economic Majority didn't want. This outcome would be the same regardless of whether or not the miners that attempted to make the changes had 51% of the hashing capacity.
So the ability for a protocol change to be successfully implemented ultimately rests with those who accept bitcoins in exchange for value.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Economic_majorityhttps://bitcoincore.org/en/team/
