How Open Source Projects Survive Poisonous People

[FreeMoney]

As another non-contributor, I've watched the forums here since the first slashdotting way, way, way back. Gavin's integrity, openness and the amount of effort he has poured into Bitcoin has been massive. Gavin's conduct has always been about seeing Bitcoin become more successful, and safer. I remember when encrypted wallets got rolled out, BIG end user change. It took forever and affected everyone, Gavin rolled out the change when he was satisfied it was safe. This is a man I can trust with my wallet, so I trust his judgment with changes to the Bitcoin protocol. I watched the video also. I support Gavin, for what it's worth.

I <3 Gavin, but that's an odd choice of example. The encryption procedure didn't actually remove the unencrypted private keys when it was first released.

edit: <3 is a heart right? It's not in my normal vocabulary.

[fennec]

edit: <3 is a heart right? It's not in my normal vocabulary.

Yeah, it's a heart.

[muyuu]

It really strikes me how much is all this about politics/ego and how little about technical decisions.

I'm quite busy lately and I'm not following the project enough to pass technical judgement. Didn't even register to the forum until recently, thinking I should really study a fair bit before finally doing so, as it's all available here.

This is the single most striking difference between what's advertised and the real bitcoin: it really depends on a few people VERY directly.

Some of the arguments here... seriously?!

I'd really appreciate if you guys left aside personality cults and moral judgement.

You're the standard delusional dev. who thinks the world revolves around
making the right technical decision, and that nothing else matters.

After all, it's a well known fact: the best designed software always wins in
the end, as we can all immediately observe (I'm willing to bet than >50%
of the folks reading this thread use windows).

At this point, for a project like bitcoin to succeed, having the right spokesperson
for the project is by far much more important than making the right (assuming
there's such a thing) technical decision.

And when it comes to that, given the amazing display of social graces he's provided
us with so far, bitcoin would simply be much better off without luke.

Never said nothing else matters. If nothing else mattered, I wouldn't bet a dime on Bitcoin as its major asset right now is a non-technical one: traction/popularity.

There is a middle-ground between "right technical decisions are everything" vs "popularity contest/who would I rather let baby-sit my kids"

I don't see what's the reason not to discuss long and hard about fundamental changes in the protocol. This is not your average OS project were continuous development is necessary and features can be added and removed at will.

The whole fucking idea behind bitcoin is that the system itself doesn't need "special" people or institutions behind. This is obviously false at this point, but let's at least not exacerbate this problem. Excuse me if I don't give top priority about who's nicer and I'd rather look at the right technical decision.

[SimonL]

As another non-contributor, I've watched the forums here since the first slashdotting way, way, way back. Gavin's integrity, openness and the amount of effort he has poured into Bitcoin has been massive. Gavin's conduct has always been about seeing Bitcoin become more successful, and safer. I remember when encrypted wallets got rolled out, BIG end user change. It took forever and affected everyone, Gavin rolled out the change when he was satisfied it was safe. This is a man I can trust with my wallet, so I trust his judgment with changes to the Bitcoin protocol. I watched the video also. I support Gavin, for what it's worth.

I <3 Gavin, but that's an odd choice of example. The encryption procedure didn't actually remove the unencrypted private keys when it was first released.

edit: <3 is a heart right? It's not in my normal vocabulary.

I meant it in the sense that a mistake in implementation could have been costly, like literally. Huge amounts of Bitcoins could have been sucked away if things went pear-shaped. Users were hollering for this, but Gavin only released the change after a long cooling off period. My point is he's very careful, didn't bow to a quick fix, and acted in the best interest of the network.

[runeks]

As was said previously, if one person NEEDED TO GO and it came down to Gavin or Luke, my vote would be to keep Gavin.
I to am afraid that Gavin would quit the project if faced with constant battles etc from Luke and others should be as well.

I second this position.

I feel that keeping Gavin is worth more than keeping Luke.

I mean no offense to Luke, I don't know him as a person. But I feel more certain that Bitcoin is better off with Gavin, and without Luke, than the other way around.

I think it's unfortunate that it has to come to this, but in the end I think it's up to Gavin to decide. I support his decision.

[Technomage]

What happened to the old Luke-jr? I commend him for his new found level headedness and willing discourse which was shown a few pages back.
If that is the pattern for the future, so much the better. Hopefully its not just a little temporary ass-kissing to keep his head above water

You can keep hoping. Luke is a manipulative personality type who has very low communication skills and he has proven to be abusive of power and he also has strange personal goals regarding his entire involvement in Bitcoin. This manipulative behaviour is very clear if you've seen his behaviour in mediums other than this forum. He clearly sees this as a more "official" place and does his best to be as polite and level headed as possible. His posts here, especially in this thread, doesn't give you a complete picture.

[Technomage]

My point of view to this situation comes from years of experience in an organization which is run 100% by voluntary work. It's an activist movement so it's not the same as open source development, but the conflicts that happen in open source development are exactly the same. It's a conflict of leadership and eventually one of two things happen, either the people involved in the conflict settle their issues and everything is "back to normal" or the situation heats up and then it can only be resolved by a split of some kind.

To me it looks very unlikely that Gavin and Luke are about to settle their issues anytime soon which means that option #2 is becoming more and more likely. Happily for all of us this is unlikely to cause a real split because Luke doesn't mean much to most of the community, while Gavin is highly valued. I agree that Luke is a great coder but project lead is project lead and that is and should continue to be Gavin. We are truly in a situation where the leadership role of Gavin needs to be made clear.

Luke needs to be stripped of all decision making roles, he is the kind of person who should stay in the background and contribute to the code if he wants to. Leadership should stay where it is, Gavin has done a great job with Bitcoin and there is no reason to believe that this time is any different. Don't get me wrong though, this doesn't mean that Gavin should be a dictator that decides everything regardless of what opinions other developers have. But the fact is that Luke has been, and still is, pretty much the only developer that is strongly against BIP16.

Bottom line is that the development of Bitcoin is a team effort. Gavin is a trusted team player, Luke is not. It's as simple as that. As far as the BIP's are concerned, I'm interested to see comments on BIP22 as well. But that is a separate issue, the main issue here and now is the future development of Bitcoin and we simply can't afford to have poisonous people in central developmental roles.

[muyuu]

As was said previously, if one person NEEDED TO GO and it came down to Gavin or Luke, my vote would be to keep Gavin.
I to am afraid that Gavin would quit the project if faced with constant battles etc from Luke and others should be as well.

I second this position.

I feel that keeping Gavin is worth more than keeping Luke.

I mean no offense to Luke, I don't know him as a person. But I feel more certain that Bitcoin is better off with Gavin, and without Luke, than the other way around.

I think it's unfortunate that it has to come to this, but in the end I think it's up to Gavin to decide. I support his decision.

I think there is absolutely no reason to bring this disjunctive. No one has threatened to leave so why even suggesting it?

At worst, they would release competing, mutually aggressive algorithms and the popularity war would wage mining-power wise. That would be bad enough but the loser would just end up going along with the winner. I doubt anyone would leave the project as they have massive time and effort invested.

[Gavin Andresen]

I moved Casascius' proposal ("BIP 22") to the Dev&Tech forum, I will respond there.

[Technomage]

I think there is absolutely no reason to bring this disjunctive. No one has threatened to leave so why even suggesting it?

At worst, they would release competing, mutually aggressive algorithms and the popularity war would wage mining-power wise. That would be bad enough but the loser would just end up going along with the winner. I doubt anyone would leave the project as they have massive time and effort invested.

I don't think you have experience over these matters if you feel it's not necessary to talk about leaving. It certainly is. The moment the debates reached the stage that this thread was necessary, the situation went to the next level. To me it's not just about anyone leaving, it's about forcing someone out if he doesn't want to leave. Open source project or not, I certainly hope the other devs can force a dev out if it is deemed that he is doing more bad than good for the project. I believe that Luke might not stop interfering voluntarily.

I'm not happy that the situation reached this stage but talking about it like "everything is fine" is not the way to go. This needs to be resolved asap in a way that a similar situation is not possible in the future, at least not with the same individuals. And as far as Luke and his followers starting their own blockchain, I'm rolling on the floor laughing at that notion. Not only will Eligius be the only significant pool to join that attempt, Eligius will lose a significant amount of its hash power if Luke decides to go on a "war path" over this.

[muyuu]

I think there is absolutely no reason to bring this disjunctive. No one has threatened to leave so why even suggesting it?

At worst, they would release competing, mutually aggressive algorithms and the popularity war would wage mining-power wise. That would be bad enough but the loser would just end up going along with the winner. I doubt anyone would leave the project as they have massive time and effort invested.

I don't think you have experience over these matters if you feel it's not necessary to talk about leaving. It certainly is. The moment the debates reached the stage that this thread was necessary, the situation went to the next level. To me it's not just about anyone leaving, it's about forcing someone out if he doesn't want to leave. Open source project or not, I certainly hope the other devs can force a dev out if it is deemed that he is doing more bad than good for the project. I believe that Luke might not stop interfering voluntarily.

I'm not happy that the situation reached this stage but talking about it like "everything is fine" is not the way to go. This needs to be resolved asap in a way that a similar situation is not possible in the future, at least not with the same individuals. And as far as Luke and his followers starting their own blockchain, I'm rolling on the floor laughing at that notion. Not only will Eligius be the only significant pool to join that attempt, Eligius will lose a significant amount of its hash power if Luke decides to go on a "war path" over this.

That would depend on how much better it would work. It only takes 3 pools to take over.

[cypherdoc]

I think there is absolutely no reason to bring this disjunctive. No one has threatened to leave so why even suggesting it?

At worst, they would release competing, mutually aggressive algorithms and the popularity war would wage mining-power wise. That would be bad enough but the loser would just end up going along with the winner. I doubt anyone would leave the project as they have massive time and effort invested.

I don't think you have experience over these matters if you feel it's not necessary to talk about leaving. It certainly is. The moment the debates reached the stage that this thread was necessary, the situation went to the next level. To me it's not just about anyone leaving, it's about forcing someone out if he doesn't want to leave. Open source project or not, I certainly hope the other devs can force a dev out if it is deemed that he is doing more bad than good for the project. I believe that Luke might not stop interfering voluntarily.

I'm not happy that the situation reached this stage but talking about it like "everything is fine" is not the way to go. This needs to be resolved asap in a way that a similar situation is not possible in the future, at least not with the same individuals. And as far as Luke and his followers starting their own blockchain, I'm rolling on the floor laughing at that notion. Not only will Eligius be the only significant pool to join that attempt, Eligius will lose a significant amount of its hash power if Luke decides to go on a "war path" over this.

1+  this is exactly right.  miners like myself will leave Eligius in an instant otherwise they will lose their entire investment in Bitcoin.

[muyuu]

I think there is absolutely no reason to bring this disjunctive. No one has threatened to leave so why even suggesting it?

At worst, they would release competing, mutually aggressive algorithms and the popularity war would wage mining-power wise. That would be bad enough but the loser would just end up going along with the winner. I doubt anyone would leave the project as they have massive time and effort invested.

I don't think you have experience over these matters if you feel it's not necessary to talk about leaving. It certainly is. The moment the debates reached the stage that this thread was necessary, the situation went to the next level. To me it's not just about anyone leaving, it's about forcing someone out if he doesn't want to leave. Open source project or not, I certainly hope the other devs can force a dev out if it is deemed that he is doing more bad than good for the project. I believe that Luke might not stop interfering voluntarily.

I'm not happy that the situation reached this stage but talking about it like "everything is fine" is not the way to go. This needs to be resolved asap in a way that a similar situation is not possible in the future, at least not with the same individuals. And as far as Luke and his followers starting their own blockchain, I'm rolling on the floor laughing at that notion. Not only will Eligius be the only significant pool to join that attempt, Eligius will lose a significant amount of its hash power if Luke decides to go on a "war path" over this.

1+  this is exactly right.  miners like myself will leave Eligius in an instant otherwise they will lose their entire investment in Bitcoin.

That's your solution right there then.

[MoonShadow]

I think there is absolutely no reason to bring this disjunctive. No one has threatened to leave so why even suggesting it?

At worst, they would release competing, mutually aggressive algorithms and the popularity war would wage mining-power wise. That would be bad enough but the loser would just end up going along with the winner. I doubt anyone would leave the project as they have massive time and effort invested.

I don't think you have experience over these matters if you feel it's not necessary to talk about leaving. It certainly is. The moment the debates reached the stage that this thread was necessary, the situation went to the next level. To me it's not just about anyone leaving, it's about forcing someone out if he doesn't want to leave. Open source project or not, I certainly hope the other devs can force a dev out if it is deemed that he is doing more bad than good for the project. I believe that Luke might not stop interfering voluntarily.

I'm not happy that the situation reached this stage but talking about it like "everything is fine" is not the way to go. This needs to be resolved asap in a way that a similar situation is not possible in the future, at least not with the same individuals. And as far as Luke and his followers starting their own blockchain, I'm rolling on the floor laughing at that notion. Not only will Eligius be the only significant pool to join that attempt, Eligius will lose a significant amount of its hash power if Luke decides to go on a "war path" over this.

That would depend on how much better it would work. It only takes 3 pools to take over.

Not quite correct.  The pools are comprised of voluntary membership, that can leave at any time.  If there is any kind of split, those pool operators cannot count upon maintaining their leveraged position longer than it takes for the news to spread across the community.  At most, a pool operator would have three days before the majority of his membership heard about the split, and then decided for themselves whether or not they agreed with their chosen pool's direction.  To be a pool operator is a position of temporary power.

[btc_artist]

Not quite correct.  The pools are comprised of voluntary membership, that can leave at any time.  If there is any kind of split, those pool operators cannot count upon maintaining their leveraged position longer than it takes for the news to spread across the community.  At most, a pool operator would have three days before the majority of his membership heard about the split, and then decided for themselves whether or not they agreed with their chosen pool's direction.  To be a pool operator is a position of temporary power.

3 days?  I think not.  The vast majority are not on these forums every day and don't have their ear to the ground.  Pools might lose a max of 20% of their hashing power by the end of 3 days.

[casascius]

3 days?  I think not.  The vast majority are not on these forums every day and don't have their ear to the ground.  Pools might lose a max of 20% of their hashing power by the end of 3 days.

I also bet a lot of miners are zombies on botnets, where changing the pool might be infeasible (e.g. hardcoded), inconvenient (requiring testing and deploying a new payload to work with a new pool), or risky for the botnet owner (in terms of being detected or losing control over his zombies).  To the extent this is true, this would slow it even more.

[stick_theman]

There is a reason Satoshi throws his weight behind Gavin, we might or might not know that reason.  I support Gavin.

Also, would be nice if we as a community can see how this plays out via webcam in a TV interview format.

Where is Bruce Wagner on this one?  This is great material for TV!

[papa_snurf]

What LukeDashJr did to coiledcoin, without his users consent, or permission, is proof positive of why he needs to be severed.

I agree. I don't know the merits of each BIP, but if I was to judge based on personality alone, then Luke would have to go.

On the other side, I wish you would take more time before implementing new features.

[midnightmagic]

For what it's worth, when I sent Gavin that video to watch, I did not send it to him with Luke in mind.

It was more of an ironic self-deprecating statement because I'd assumed everyone had already seen it; and, having not actually contributed public code to bitcoind itself, was trying to convey that my objections to the adoption of either BIP16/17 weren't worth more than that of just a solo-miner (who can code) in terms of actual progress on the project.

The short timelines involved are just very uncomfortable for me given the "millions" of dollars of assets at stake here.

Bitcoin is no longer an experiment.

[anu]

Bitcoin is no longer an experiment.

+1