How decisions made within Bitcoin Community?

[goodxp]

Dear Bitcoiners,

I am a seasoned programmer, who sometimes write reviews to new ideas/technologies at Weibo (pretty much like Twitter in Chinese, but allows longer articles). I was asked by some people - How decisions made within Bitcoin Community?  I post it here to get a summary, since I am not up to a deep understanding.

I have heard that Bitcoin Foundation is making most important decisions, and they are paying salary to lead developers to get the ball rolling, is that true?

If yes, what is the reason to have a centralized board? How are they elected and dismissed, and how they filter the radical ideas and involve the others in the community to drive implementation?

If no, then who is the major facilitator here? Do you have a voting system or something for achieving consensus? Or just everybody post like me and hoping most popular threads will get an intention of someone who have the power/motivation to implement?

I am sorry for so many questions and there could be answers in some posts already that I missed in searching. I wish I could get most valid input here so to write back to my 30K+ followers, without being sight as an idiot. Thank you.

goodxp

[Rannasha]

There is voting. But not in the way you think.

The Bitcoin system is in essence a decentralized democracy. If the majority of nodes applies a new rule, then the remaining minority can either cave in and also apply this rule or they have to fork away from the main blockchain.

So if the developers come out with a new update that is disliked by most of the community, it won't be installed and those nodes that do install it will be incompatible with the majority. This creates a massive incentive for updates that are not backwards compatible to either be accepted by everyone or by noone.

Since many Bitcoin users are rather conservative about changes to the protocol, updates to the software that are not backwards compatible are made very rarely.

[goodxp]

There is voting. But not in the way you think.

The Bitcoin system is in essence a decentralized democracy. If the majority of nodes applies a new rule, then the remaining minority can either cave in and also apply this rule or they have to fork away from the main blockchain.

So if the developers come out with a new update that is disliked by most of the community, it won't be installed and those nodes that do install it will be incompatible with the majority. This creates a massive incentive for updates that are not backwards compatible to either be accepted by everyone or by noone.

Since many Bitcoin users are rather conservative about changes to the protocol, updates to the software that are not backwards compatible are made very rarely.

Thanks for your reply. Yes all nodes will potentially "vote" for changes and the developers have been doing well so far. However, I am asking how everything is decided before putting into the list. Even people on nodes can decide whether they like it, they are mainly miners, what if an idea happen to sound better but against all rigs holders now?