What if dev-team is compromised?

[im3w1l]

Suppose someone accidentally the whole dev team? Or suppose it is infiltrated? Or suppose they are bought off?

How should we as a community react? Probably fork right, but what fork? It is easy to imagine a dozen forks springing up before things stabilize. In a worst case they could be so weak, the original, comprised chain becomes the favored one, simply because it is easier to stick with the status quo.

Maybe we could benefit from a chain of command or something?

[greyhawk]

Mother Hen, put im3w1l on the List. They're trying to organize.

[acoindr]

Suppose someone accidentally the whole dev team? Or suppose it is infiltrated? Or suppose they are bought off?

How should we as a community react? Probably fork right, but what fork? It is easy to imagine a dozen forks springing up before things stabilize. In a worst case they could be so weak, the original, comprised chain becomes the favored one, simply because it is easier to stick with the status quo.

Maybe we could benefit from a chain of command or something?

While the dev-team is brilliant they don't equal Bitcoin. The community doesn't always go for what the dev-team suggests. In fact sometimes there are differences of opinion within the dev-team. Also, the dev-team isn't set in stone. Members of the core dev-team can change.

This is a strength of Bitcoin being decentralized. There is no single point of failure. Since the entire community benefits from Bitcoin being successful, everyone naturally desires to do what it takes to make that happen. This usually means as long as things are working there is no reason to change or accept any changes. Only changes which can win a large majority of support, what Gavin often calls a supermajority, will usually have any chance at being implemented.

[Stephen Gornick]

Probably fork right, but what fork?

Well, let's take the unintentional change to the Bitcoin protocol that happened with the Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoind v0.8 release.

It caused a hard fork.

It took less than an hour for a sufficient amount of hashing capacity to conclude that coins mined using v0.8 blocks would become worthless and thus abandon it to go back to the protocol as it exists in v0.7 and prior (or use a v0.8 patch that fixed the incompatability).

That's because the economic majority favored the v0.7 side.  

 - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Economic_majority

And that's for a change that introduced that unwanted behavior had slipped through undiscovered.  An intentional change to alter the protocol would likely not go unnoticed as there are many eyes on every change to the source that is released:
 - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Release_process

[LiteCoinGuy]

switch to litecoin, its more userbased.

[Rassah]

If the dev team was compromised, then Bitcoin-QT would change, but Electrum, Blockchain.info, the wallets on exchanges, all the mobile phone wallets, and all the mining pools, will continue working as usual, and will likely reject Bitcoin-QT transactions and blocks, which would instantly throw really huge red flags that something is up. So, anyone using anything other than QT will be fine, and anyone using QT will just have to either downgrade to an older version, or export their private keys to a non-compromised wallet.

[grue]

switch to litecoin, its more userbased.

And how exactly is it more "userbased"?

[greyhawk]

switch to litecoin, its more userbased.

And how exactly is it more "userbased"?

By being more buzzwordy 

[acoindr]

If the dev team was compromised, then Bitcoin-QT would change, but Electrum, Blockchain.info, the wallets on exchanges, all the mobile phone wallets, and all the mining pools, will continue working as usual, and will likely reject Bitcoin-QT transactions and blocks, which would instantly throw really huge red flags that something is up. So, anyone using anything other than QT will be fine, and anyone using QT will just have to either downgrade to an older version, or export their private keys to a non-compromised wallet.

Incorrect.

The dev team can't make any changes to all the Bitcoin-Qt versions already distributed and running on various computers. If you don't want to agree to any changes, simply do not upgrade.

[dillpicklechips]

switch to litecoin, its more userbased.

And how exactly is it more "userbased"?

No dev-team to compromise?

[dillpicklechips]

Probably fork right, but what fork?

Well, let's take the unintentional change to the Bitcoin protocol that happened with the Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoind v0.8 release.

It caused a hard fork.

It took less than an hour for a sufficient amount of hashing capacity to conclude that coins mined using v0.8 blocks would become worthless and thus abandon it to go back to the protocol as it exists in v0.7 and prior (or use a v0.8 patch that fixed the incompatability).

That's because the economic majority favored the v0.7 side.  

 - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Economic_majority

And that's for a change that introduced that unwanted behavior had slipped through undiscovered.  An intentional change to alter the protocol would likely not go unnoticed as there are many eyes on every change to the source that is released:
 - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Release_process

Does bitcoin have some type of alert/alarm when a fork exists so I can avoid taking payments or sending during this time?

[theymos]

Does bitcoin have some type of alert/alarm when a fork exists so I can avoid taking payments or sending during this time?

Yes. If there's an invalid chain longer than your current chain, Bitcoin will automatically give you a warning and go into safe mode. 0.8.5 (probably) will go into safe mode if a competing chain is even approaching a dangerous length.

[bbit]

Things would move forward. I don't see the dev-team being compromised.

[johnyj]

One dev team down, thousands up  

[bg002h]

...then their salaries for working on Bitcoin will be cut

Seriously, if they were compromised, we'd lose a lot of free employees...

[600watt]

-invent new payment technology
-get all the hackers, drug users, hippies, conspiracy theorists, liberals to love it
-compromise dev team
-pull the plug
-laugh all the way home

[WSDN]

One dev team down, thousands up  

+1

[infested999]

Suppose someone accidentally the whole dev team? Or suppose it is infiltrated? Or suppose they are bought off?

How should we as a community react? Probably fork right, but what fork? It is easy to imagine a dozen forks springing up before things stabilize. In a worst case they could be so weak, the original, comprised chain becomes the favored one, simply because it is easier to stick with the status quo.

Maybe we could benefit from a chain of command or something?

This has already happened, forcing the transactions to be over a certain amount of coins. Nothing you can do, just take it, as we have seen.

Is this the twitch chat?

Oh, I only get one message in slow mode huh? Well, if I only get one message, I'll make it sweet and sharp. These authoritarian mods will not be tolerated. Dota 2 was based on the premise of the free market, and it has slowly been corrupted by nazi mods in chats who are power hungry. Don't ruin the Dota 2 and twitch experience. Thanks.

from here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfdky8Nmlic

This content has been modified to fit your simple mind:

Oh, I only get one tx with this fee huh? Well, if I only get one tx, I'll make it sweet and sharp. These authoritarian mods will not be tolerated. Bitcoin was based on the premise of the free market, and it has slowly been corrupted by nazi mods in the dev-forum who are power hungry. Don't ruin the Bitcoin and capitalist experience. Thanks.

[gmaxwell]

How do you know it isn't already?

[Rassah]

How do you know it isn't already?

Because your handlers wouldn't allow you to say that, and if you reply, it's proof you are still alive and not in solitary confinement.