Is Jeff Garzik the new lead developer of bitcoin now? What will happen to the core development team? Will they still play an important role in bitcoin's future or are they considered out and replaced by Jeff and his team?
These are very important questions that everyone should start asking.
LOL, no.
*facepalm*
These are very misguided questions that only people who don't understand open source development should be asking. Bitcoin doesn't
have a lead developer in the same sense that it doesn't have a CEO. Development
teams can and do indeed have lead developers, but Jeff Garzik has not suddenly been appointed lead developer of Core. No one
replaces anyone or anything. And obviously Core will still play an important role in development.
Both Garzik and Core are entirely free to do what they want and they can all have their own ideas about how to move forwards, even if they're quite different. But at the same time, just because the teams are separate entities, that doesn't then preclude them from working together either. As an example, one of the Core developers was helping to identify issues in the BTC1 branch and BIP91, even though that wasn't Core's idea. Such is the nature of open source development, anyone can chip in and help out where they want. The only thing that matters is that we get solid code at the end of it.
