What is the right and fair way to stop Mike Hearn?

[Mr. Gabu]

I think Mike Hearn is way out of line with all his actions.

What is the correct and fair way to remove Mike Hearn from the Bitcoin development?

Can this be done by community vote?

Can this be done by developer vote?


I have nothing against this person and he can develop "bitcoinj" all he want's and stay a Bitcoin expert (at NSA and Circle or in the media). But he should not be part of the core Bitcoin client developtment.

[Peter Todd]

Bitcoin is a decentralized system.

If you don't like the work Mike does, don't use it! If you don't like the direction he's going with that work, write some code yourself that goes in a different direction. If you don't like where "core" Bitcoin client development is "going", go to http://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin and hit the "Fork" button and convince other people to join your development effort.

You people seriously misunderstand how Bitcoin works...

[Peter Todd]

Incidentally:

pete@petertodd:~/src/bitcoin$ git log | grep Mike\ Hearn | wc -l
9
pete@petertodd:~/src/bitcoin$ git log | grep Peter\ Todd | wc -l
19
pete@petertodd:~/src/bitcoin$ git log | grep Gregory\ Maxwell | wc -l
117
pete@petertodd:~/src/bitcoin$ git log | grep Pieter\ Wuille | wc -l
583
pete@petertodd:~/src/bitcoin$ git log | grep Gavin\ Andresen | wc -l
939
pete@petertodd:~/src/bitcoin$ git log | grep 'Wladimir J. van der Laan' | wc -l
1013

Whether or not you're a "core" developer is a social statement about how much other people respect your work and opinions. If you don't like Mike's work, do some of your own in a different direction that other people respect. It doesn't have to necessarily be code, but calls for a community vote from a guy with twenty-something posts isn't it either.

[Qoheleth]

What is the correct and fair way to remove Mike Hearn from the Bitcoin development?

If you mean bitcoind development, it would be by convincing the other developers to no longer accept his patches, and convincing the community to not use his patches either. The critical matter, as always, is one of trust.

Here's a good start: why not make the argument in this thread, right here and now, as to what is so "out of line" about "Mike's actions" that the community ought to reject him/his work?

[Mr. Gabu]

Thank you Peter, so he did only 9 commits. Kinda strange or misleading to call himself bitcoin core developer then.
To give some explanation, I watched his London video and what he says there was finally enough for me.

There is a good discussion under: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=428777.0

Qoheleth/everbody:
I think he is out of line, pushing for blacklisting.
I think he is out of line, pushing for SSL as part of this payment protocol.
I think he way is out of line, trying to force everybody to proof their identity by verifying their passport.

This is against Satoshis and all earlier crypto-hackers spirit, ideas and dreams.

[Peter Todd]

Thank you Peter, so he did only 9 commits. Kinda strange or misleading to call himself bitcoin core developer then.
To give some explanation, I watched his London video and what he says there was finally enough for me.

There is a good discussion under: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=428777.0

Qoheleth/everbody:
I think he is out of line, pushing for blacklisting.
I think he is out of line, pushing for SSL as part of this payment protocol.
I think he way is out of line, trying to force everybody to proof their identity by verifying their passport.

You're missing my point. Those 9 commits aren't why some people call Mike a core developer just as much as my 19 commits aren't why some people call me one - our contributions are to things other than some central repository of code.

Thus, there's no authority on who is or isn't a "core" developer beyond "people believe you are" - so if you don't like Mike's influence do something with more influence. This thread isn't one of those things.

[gglon]

Qoheleth/everbody:
I think he is out of line, pushing for blacklisting.
I think he is out of line, pushing for SSL as part of this payment protocol.
I think he way is out of line, trying to force everybody to proof their identity by verifying their passport.

These are just some proposed solutions to the known problems (he is not pushing anything). If you know better solutions, please share, so that we will be able to choose the best solution available.

[TruckStyling]

Here's a good start: why not make the argument in this thread, right here and now, as to what is so "out of line" about "Mike's actions" that the community ought to reject him/his work?

I think this not right or misleading.

Who can really reject his patches? Only Gavin, right? Gavin won't reject his patches because they are buddies ...

That's why people are asking for a different way to stop Hearns involvement.

[Peter Todd]

You can't the core is already too powerful, they want that way. Why do you think they only have one developer working on the blockchain is too big and needs to be prune problem? Cause they want to keep it big so other people don't use it, they can make bitcoin centralize. Money and power corrupt it is no different in the bitcoin world.

Oh, I didn't realize I was the only person working on that problem. Mind telling me who "they" are so I can ask for my paycheck? Thanks.

(fwiw litecoin hired me to implement or sub-contract someone else to implement pruning of some kind in a fairly open-ended contract)

Yet in less than 6 months they have push thru a payment protocol that they know is broken and uses central authorities.

You're welcome to implement the non-broken OpenPGP code, or fund someone to do so for you. I'd be happy to manage such an effort if the community wants to fund it and can find some developers - I've written extensively on how to do it elsewhere.

tl;dr: talk is cheap.

[TruckStyling]

You're welcome to implement the non-broken OpenPGP code, or fund someone to do so for you. I'd be happy to manage such an effort if the community wants to fund it and can find some developers - I've written extensively on how to do it elsewhere.

Is this a joke? How many millions did this foundation ripped of the community in member fees?
Why do we have to pay for development? This is absurd.

[Qoheleth]

Lets be honest peter we all know that no one is going to use the openPGP code, bitpay has already come out in support and that will make their merchants use that and coinbase (which I love and have great support for) is going to use it since Gavin is on the board. I mean to implement openPGP code would waste my funds and my time.

If PGP is a nonstarter, what would your preferred solution be to the problem which SSL integration purports to address?

[whtchocla7e]

People who control development control the future of Bitcoin. Better get used to it.

[Holliday]

People who control development control the future of Bitcoin. Better get used to it.

Wrong.

[Peter Todd]

I think this not right or misleading.

Who can really reject his patches? Only Gavin, right? Gavin won't reject his patches because they are buddies ...

That's why people are asking for a different way to stop Hearns involvement.

You guys don't hang around github much:

Enable tx replacement on testnet. (closed)

Drop fees by 10x due to the persistently higher exchange rate. (not getting merged)

Gavin doesn't have magical merge-by-fiat powers either:

Remove hard-coded fee rules (closed)

Relay first-double-spend transactions (not getting merged)

Nor does he have magical powers over the Bitcoin Foundation bylaws:

Add promotion and protection of decentralization to purposes

Even in the centralized development structure arguing things intelligently goes a long way, and when your ideas get rejected in that central repository you can always take them elsewhere, or even to a different currency altogether.

Yes you are the only working on it, and I surprise this isn't bigger issue. It should be something that should be worked on by all the top devs. "They" are the foundation and no I am not going to start an argue about how the foundation has nothing to do with the bitcoin codebase, which we all know at this time isn't true.

Pieter Wuille is doing the bulk of the work getting pruning implemented actually. It's just taking awhile because the changes he needs to make to the networking code to enable it are quite complex and risky - he's already had to throw out his first attempt at solving it.

As for other scalability issues, Gregory Maxwell, Adam Back, Andrew Miller, Mark Freidenbach, and yes, Mike Hearn are all working on various aspects of the problem, among others. It's just a very, very hard problem.

Lets be honest peter we all know that no one is going to use the openPGP code, bitpay has already come out in support and that will make their merchants use that and coinbase (which I love and have great support for) is going to use it since Gavin is on the board. I mean to implement openPGP code would waste my funds and my time.

OpenPGP is actually most interesting, and obviously valuable, for the person-to-person case; you're money would do good things there. (Dark Wallet people are interested in this too fwiw)

People who control development control the future of Bitcoin. Better get used to it.

People who do development, control development...

[tvbcof]

People who control development control the future of Bitcoin. Better get used to it.

Wrong.

+1

I think that Todd is ignoring/ignorant of a lot of the forces that are shaping the trajectory of the solution and placing to much emphasis on the actual codebase.  External factors tend to have a much bigger impact on a project's trajectory than code, and there is now a LOT of interest in Bitcoin from a lot of different directions.

Also, I wanted to get an entry in this thread to more conveniently follow it

[Peter Todd]

I think that Todd is ignoring/ignorant of a lot of the forces that are shaping the trajectory of the solution and placing to much emphasis on the actual codebase.  External factors tend to have a much bigger impact on a project's trajectory than code, and there is now a LOT of interest in Bitcoin from a lot of different directions.

If I thought code was what mattered most, I might, you know, actually write some.

[d'aniel]

I think Mike Hearn is way out of line with all his actions.

Yes, SPV clients and micropayment channels are preposterous!  

Edit: I just heard that he's working on getting Tor on by default for Bitcoin wallets as well!  What a monster!

[justusranvier]

https://blog.conformal.com/redecentralization-robust-developer-network/

[NanoAkron]

Thank you Peter, so he did only 9 commits. Kinda strange or misleading to call himself bitcoin core developer then.
To give some explanation, I watched his London video and what he says there was finally enough for me.

There is a good discussion under: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=428777.0

Qoheleth/everbody:
I think he is out of line, pushing for blacklisting.
I think he is out of line, pushing for SSL as part of this payment protocol.
I think he way is out of line, trying to force everybody to proof their identity by verifying their passport.

This is against Satoshis and all earlier crypto-hackers spirit, ideas and dreams.

You're misinterpreting his point about passports. He was using it as an example of a trusted centralised token.

[NanoAkron]

I think Mike Hearn is way out of line with all his actions.

Yes, SPV clients and micropayment channels are preposterous!  

Edit: I just heard that he's working on getting Tor on by default for Bitcoin wallets as well!  What a monster!

TOR integration is potentially dangerous at this stage because it's very low hanging fruit for media outlets/vested interests to attack.

If we delayed TOR integration until bitcoin has gotten over many of these attacks regarding its 'anonymity' and 'links to criminal organisations', then they won't be able to lump us in with 'paedophiles' and 'arms traders' quite as easily.