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

[tspacepilot]

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...

This seems right in principle, but in practice I think it downplays the concerns of the OP.

[justusranvier]

I want to express my 100% confidence in Mike Hearn who does an excellent job at pushing Bitcoin in the right direction.

Even if, or especially if, anyone deserves 100% confidence then expressions like this do more harm than good.

Put on your villain hat for a moment and ask yourself who you're going to try to bribe, blackmail, or extort in order to infiltrate and destroy a project. Do you pick the person who everybody is skeptical of and watches closely, or do you try to suborn the person who everybody trusts implicitly?

Skeptical scrutiny protects everybody, particularly people who want to do the right thing but may be under pressure to do otherwise. It's easier for honest actors to resist such pressure they can plausibly claim they would be instantly detected and countered if they tried to harm the project.

[anti-scam]

Both on an Advisor board to bitcoin companies, which I find highly unethical in their positions, and I find the paycheck Gavin and other core devs get highly unethical.

You think it's unethical that people get paid money to develop a system that supports a multiple billion dollar economy? That's ridiculous. So not only should the developers do everything your way, they shouldn't get compensated either?

This is what makes Satoshi cry at night and makes me personal sick.

If Satoshi is so offended by the current development team, then why doesn't he come back to denounce them and retake control of the project? He personally picked Gavin to lead the community and he obviously hasn't changed that opinion yet.

I love when newbies come here and act like they been in the community for years. I been here for years I been using it when bitcoin was worth a dollar.

I've seen Bitcoin be worth far less.

Now taking a decentralized or as I say p2p cause it isn't decentralized anymore system, and adding a huge part of a central authority is not the perfect solution it shouldn't be any solution. PGP should be the only solution. Grandma shouldn't be worried cause we should be worrying for grandma.

So basically everybody should be forced to use the solution that meets your standards, even when two solutions can be implemented easily without conflicting with each other? That doesn't sound very decentralized to me.

Even if, or especially if, anyone deserves 100% confidence then expressions like this do more harm than good.

Put on your villain hat for a moment and ask yourself who you're going to try to bribe, blackmail, or extort in order to infiltrate and destroy a project. Do you pick the person who everybody is skeptical of and watches closely, or do you try to suborn the person who everybody trusts implicitly?

Skeptical scrutiny protects everybody, particularly people who want to do the right thing but may be under pressure to do otherwise. It's easier for honest actors to resist such pressure they can plausibly claim they would be instantly detected and countered if they tried to harm the project.

This is a good point. I defend Mike Hearn because of his behavior, not because of some mythical confidence in him.

[Peter Todd]

Why don't you actually educate yourself before making a bunch of cryptic accusations phrased as questions? This ridiculous bashing of Mike Hearn has to stop. I don't agree with all of his proposed solutions but I'd sure hate to see a smart, capable individual driven out of the community by a bunch of people who can't even be bothered to understand what they're talking about. This is why Gavin doesn't even bother visiting these forums anymore. Keep making inflammatory comments and all that will happen is that Bitcoin development will continue without any sort of community input.

You're talking to a crowd who thinks Mike and Gavin are actively working to harm the decentralization of Bitcoin, especially with the NSA leaks showing that the US government actually does spend a significant amount of time trying to damage computer security via subverting standards processes and development efforts - it's a reasonable thing to think. I'm sure many of the posters above would be happy to see them driven out.

The Bitcoin community needs both Mike Hearns and Amir Taakis. There is room for both solutions that work now and aren't as ideologically pure and solutions that will work later and are "perfect".  Hardcore cryptolibertarians aren't the only Bitcoin users nor should they be. Look up "Worse is better" vs. "MIT approach". Mike Hearn is proposing things that will work as quickly and easily as possible and advance Bitcoin's utility for your average person. This is hardly treason. None of his solutions will conflict with having the perfect solution later. Implementing X.509 certificates won't prevent PGP from being implemented later. Grandma probably doesn't have to worry about Verisign collaborating with the government to steal her morning coffee money.

Nah, actually implementing X.509 certs for person-to-person stuff does prevent PGP from being implemented later. It's a standard network effect situation so ensuring that the right path is what people go down at the beginning is extremely important if we want to have a decentralized and secure system at the end. For person-to-business the existing infrastructure is sufficiently entrenched that it's not worth fighting against for now, but person-to-person that infrastructure just doesn't exist yet. Anyway, as I wrote elsewhere, you can easily use the PGP technology to get the best of both worlds, centralized CA's, multiple CA's and WoT.

But... if the above posters were serious they'd go do something other than just argue. Donating to the Dark Wallet effort is probably worthwhile for instance.

[anti-scam]

Nah, actually implementing X.509 certs for person-to-person stuff does prevent PGP from being implemented later.

I don't really see this as being the case. They're two different standards that have two different ideal uses, so the "network effect" doesn't really apply. Plus, from the user perspective the difference between the two is not as large as it is from the developer perspective. To your average user that doesn't know that the differing standards exist, a PGP-based system would seem similar to an X.509-based system, just with some additional features. This would make the transition much easier.

You obviously don't understand, what I meant was them being part of the protocol should be far removed from the business side. That is called unethical, just like insider trading, it isn't right.

So you'd rather that core developers be financially beholden to organizations like Google or Microsoft than organizations like The Bitcoin Foundation? Or should Gavin flip burgers before coming home to program?

Cause he is doing us a favor we have to sort out this mess. When Gavin took the position he was good, money changes people and people change with time. But I guess you don't think people change...

That's a pretty flimsy argument. Satoshi has nearly a billion dollars in Bitcoin. I doubt that he'd stand by if he thought that something was going severely wrong with it.

[augustocroppo]

Mike & Augusto - what do you say to the billions of poor and unbanked people around the world who stand to benefit from the personal-banking aspects of bitcoin, yet who don't have passports, encrypted USBs or other forms of trustworthy ID? Why are you interested in centralised solutions that only affect bitcoiners from wealthy nations?

Personal banking aspects of Bitcoin? Is this a joke? Let me refresh your mind: Bitcoin is a P2P software, not an bank emulator.

[justusranvier]

Not that it's on topic or anything but never expect an objective answer about Bitcoin from an economist, any more than you'd expect to hear objective criticism of IP from a RIAA employee. Bitcoin was invented to bring their entire world crashing down.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvebxYILfZQ#t=9m5s

Mike & Augusto - what do you say to the billions of poor and unbanked people around the world who stand to benefit from the personal-banking aspects of bitcoin, yet who don't have passports, encrypted USBs or other forms of trustworthy ID? Why are you interested in centralised solutions that only affect bitcoiners from wealthy nations?

Personal banking aspects of Bitcoin? Is this a joke? Let me refresh your mind: Bitcoin is a P2P software, not an bank emulator.

[tvbcof]

...
But... if the above posters were serious they'd go do something other than just argue. Donating to the Dark Wallet effort is probably worthwhile for instance.

A lot of my interest in Bitcoin has been siphoned off to concern about more basic and trunk level threats (Bitcoin, in my mind, being upward out on a branch somewhere.)

I'm interested in the hardware work that you described.  A few months ago I did a little bit of looking around into open hardware efforts but was generally a bit underwhelmed.  I saw nothing like the device that you are describing, and it is very close to what I was looking for.  The first power-on initialization in particular is an idea which I'd not thought of and is intriguing.  I'd be interested to know if you have links to similar projects and/or plans to continue the work you mentioned.

[Mr. Gabu]

I will make this non work. German Federal Printing Office (Bundesdruckerei) got "insider jobbed", not really hacked.

Bla bla, long story short:
I have this dump, it contains real data sets (200.000) with passport numbers incl. these signing keys (only active on 20% of German passports).


I will instant release it, if this BS is pushed further.

[tvbcof]

Mike & Augusto - what do you say to the billions of poor and unbanked people around the world who stand to benefit from the personal-banking aspects of bitcoin, yet who don't have passports, encrypted USBs or other forms of trustworthy ID? Why are you interested in centralised solutions that only affect bitcoiners from wealthy nations?

Personal banking aspects of Bitcoin? Is this a joke? Let me refresh your mind: Bitcoin is a P2P software, not an bank emulator.

Say it all you like, but it is increasingly less and less true.  This both due to the increasing strain on resources causing segments of the userbase to drop out of the peer arrangement, and to the increasing userbase who add to the denominator (peer/user) and to nothing even modestly 'peer'.  To Multibit's credit it was not even claiming to be P2P when last I looked.

[anti-scam]

You really think Gavin or Mike have to flip burgers? Bitcoins are worth $1000 a piece, and they probably have a lot of them. But I guess their greed to get all the bitcoins is much more powerful.

This is still an experiment and I think yes Satoshi will let it die if that is where we take it.

So they shouldn't spend their time making more money because you've deemed that they already have enough? They should be locked into purely charitable endeavors for the rest of their lives? You have weird views on decentralization.

[Zx2k9^3!^VWHd]

International passport data will be released until this stops.

Yours sincerly,

The Hackers Choice

http://www.thc.org

[augustocroppo]

Zero-knowledge proof ----> Think about a situation where to prove something it was required a meaningless piece of information which is quite difficult to be replicated. For example, let's just assume that a random person needs to know that another random person is holding something which cannot be easily forged. The random person is not interested in what exactly the another random person is holding, it just want to be sure the another random person is holding something unique. In order to know that, the random person would have to see the object the another random person is holding, but that would reveal what the another random person is holding. So how to solve this problem?

[giszmo]

I want to express my 100% confidence in Mike Hearn who does an excellent job at pushing Bitcoin in the right direction.

Even if, or especially if, anyone deserves 100% confidence then expressions like this do more harm than good.

Put on your villain hat for a moment and ask yourself who you're going to try to bribe, blackmail, or extort in order to infiltrate and destroy a project. Do you pick the person who everybody is skeptical of and watches closely, or do you try to suborn the person who everybody trusts implicitly?

Skeptical scrutiny protects everybody, particularly people who want to do the right thing but may be under pressure to do otherwise. It's easier for honest actors to resist such pressure they can plausibly claim they would be instantly detected and countered if they tried to harm the project.

I agree with you totally that a system that's developers are under extremest scrutiny is very hard to be corrupted but it also is hard to work when every reasonable contribution that is not carefully worded in cooperation with your 10 guys PR department causes a shit storm. The OP here for example didn't discuss governments having passports in abundance being capable of still exercising MITM attacks to double-spend (seriously? Would they? If they would, would we stick with using passports?) and most likely he didn't understand the zero-knowledge-part of the suggestion, attacking based on lack of understanding, going right against Mike Hearn with a post that looks designed to provoke as much turmoil as possible. Asking "What is the right and fair way to stop Mike Hearn?" is assuming we agree that Mike has to be stopped, so answering his question (as the first people did) is giving the OP credibility in his implied criticism. He did not ask "What is the right and fair way to stop a core developer?" and neither did he ask "How can we prevent Miners having to use their passport?" which might be OP's real problem.

Also I guess we agree on this: In any software system with only a hand full of people capable to change the core protocol, corruption is cheap and therefore it is important to increase the number of people who can contribute and blow the whistle if the current core team is taking a less than optimal decision.

(I hope my English makes sense. I used some words I'm not really too familiar with such as scrutiny, abundance, turmoil. Any corrections welcome as pm )

[justusranvier]

I agree with you totally that a system that's developers are under extremest scrutiny is very hard to be corrupted but it also is hard to work when every reasonable contribution that is not carefully worded in cooperation with your 10 guys PR department causes a shit storm.

That's a good point. Shouting incoherently is not useful and distracts from more relevant criticisms.

Also I guess we agree on this: In any software system with only a hand full of people capable to change the core protocol, corruption is cheap and therefore it is important to increase the number of people who can contribute and blow the whistle if the current core team is taking a less than optimal decision.

Agreed.

[giszmo]

You really think Gavin or Mike have to flip burgers? Bitcoins are worth $1000 a piece, and they probably have a lot of them. But I guess their greed to get all the bitcoins is much more powerful.

This is still an experiment and I think yes Satoshi will let it die if that is where we take it.

So Gavin and Mike are driven by greed and the holy Satoshi will not shine over all of us if we don't stop these devils? I find your contribution very disrespectful but don't expect much reason from some religious fundamentalist  

[TruckStyling]

This is just ugly. The end of this will be the release of huge amounts of personal data from innocent people.
Hackers will release some, crypto-anarchist or people believing in Satoshis values will buy as much as they can afford in TOR Dark Markets and release to stop this idea, goverment agents will release some to incriminate Bitcoin and make it look bad.

[anti-scam]

You really think Gavin or Mike have to flip burgers? Bitcoins are worth $1000 a piece, and they probably have a lot of them. But I guess their greed to get all the bitcoins is much more powerful.

This is still an experiment and I think yes Satoshi will let it die if that is where we take it.

So Gavin and Mike are driven by greed and the holy Satoshi will not shine over all of us if we don't stop these devils? I find your contribution very disrespectful but don't expect much reason from some religious fundamentalist 

Can you read? No I am asking a serious question can you read? First off I am not even close to a religious fundamentalist. Yeah you know what I find disrespectful, people like you, who are so blinded. The funny part is people said the same thing when I first told of how bad the foundation would be and that was true. So I suggest you listen to me, I know what I am talking about.

What has the foundation done that's so horrible?

[anti-scam]

You really think Gavin or Mike have to flip burgers? Bitcoins are worth $1000 a piece, and they probably have a lot of them. But I guess their greed to get all the bitcoins is much more powerful.

This is still an experiment and I think yes Satoshi will let it die if that is where we take it.

So Gavin and Mike are driven by greed and the holy Satoshi will not shine over all of us if we don't stop these devils? I find your contribution very disrespectful but don't expect much reason from some religious fundamentalist 

Can you read? No I am asking a serious question can you read? First off I am not even close to a religious fundamentalist. Yeah you know what I find disrespectful, people like you, who are so blinded. The funny part is people said the same thing when I first told of how bad the foundation would be and that was true. So I suggest you listen to me, I know what I am talking about.

What has the foundation done that's so horrible?

Making the codebase centralized, not protecting bitcoin users, bad planning of the setup of the board... should I go on?

This is so off-topic so I am not contributing anymore to this thread.

The codebase was already centralized and the other two are completely subjective.

[dewdeded]

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

This is really good.