This article describes hodlonaut's view of some of the interpersonal dynamics within the Bitcoin Core project and its funders.
Hodlonaut strongly implies that several people in Bitcoin Core were not acting impartially when it comes to making decisions about who to fund or to whom to give authority.
I think there is some use to talking about how these things work and perceived problems, but it takes a deft hand...and one without an agenda.
All human organizations have interpersonal friction. Sometimes it must simply be accepted, other times it gets to be enough of a source of friction that it must be dealt with.
But there are always two (or more) sides to these kind of stories, and I. Can only imagine running an organization like this is incredibly messy.
Definitely worth reading holdlonaut's article, but also worth reserving your judgment.
We're just so lucky that there were enough centrist Dad's present to form a silent and civically minded wall against male privilege and prejudice. Our bitcoin has been saved. Hurray!
So I speed-read through the article (because I find drama boring) and it sounds like the usual FOSS "clique" drama where you can replace the names and project with almost any other popular project and its players, given it is a project where a lot of hope and passion lives, there is an insider group and some money is changing hands.
The big problem in this is not whether or not this happened. The problem is that many devs would have been ok with
laanwjbeing BDFL with emphasis on the B. But, Bitcoin is too big for a BDFL. Bitcoin is also too big for Bitcoin Core. You cannot cast people out from Bitcoin, if it is to solve any problem. The drive that tries to rid the world of the SPOF - that Voskuil alludes to, and ariard... and Jimmy & co recently too - is ultimately what will make or break Bitcoin. If Bitcoin truly is a protocol, it's only a matter of time for this to be solved.What I am less amused about: if anyone is surprised by this, then have they read the bitcoin/bitcoin discussions on the repo sometimes? Before the drama carried over to social media? If not, why care now? It's not like you're reviewing anything anyway then, so you're anyway at the mercy of some process that you gaslit yourself into believing protects you.
You make a really good point here.
I think I qualify as one of these people who is not personally doing code review -- not for my node software, nor for my wallet software -- but who does want to pay attention to...something.[1]
And that's probably the problem: there is a sort of learned helplessness that users (non dev users particularly) have. I don't know how to evaluate the project, so I guess I'll evaluate the people working on the project.
I don't think it is a necessarily bad way to go: plenty of times in business it makes sense to use your knowledge of a person's character and track record as short hand for evidence that the project they are working on is of similar quality.
But, in the case of the current drama with Core, there were apparently a lot of people who were not bothering to even pay attention to the people and drama until it became fashionable.
So, what were these people paying attention to before all this? What was I paying attention to?
When it comes to my node software, I was paying attention to the things said by the people I figured were able to review the code. Perhaps also, I was looking to see which projects were relying on the node software I use.
If this is the case though, perhaps it should be said that users should ignore all the drama inside the project. If you don't actively review or contribute to the project, if your role is solely that of a user, you probably shouldn't have an opinion on the inter-project drama.
by paying attention I almost mean something like due diligence -- if you don't look at the code yourself, what do you look at to sleep well at night while relying on any given software. ↩
Maybe I come off as confrontational - probably I am, haha. But it's not personal, so please don't take it that way.
I'm not saying that everyone should review code. If you want to trust the process wherein others review the code, then you review the process. This is a perfectly understandable thing for people that don't read the code. But I fear that this too is too much for many. How sovereign are you if you didn't test the process you trust? Do you like finding out that 2 people that did a lot of work on reviewing code - the ones that protect the integrity of the software and therefore are needed for the process - are feeling worked against? Doesn't matter that these aren't the most polite people that ever existed; you simply need people that do the work, and then disagree with you - that's also what Adam Back was trying to say, I think, in the quotes of the article.
Thing is, all this happened years ago. I remember it clearly because there was a much larger process thing going on around that time, about "maintainers with a specific portfolio". This type of subject area focus works with Linux as that's a hierarchical structure, but it doesn't work with orgs without centralized leadership. Everyone has their expertise but top tier maintainership cannot be discriminative and you don't get to work on the things you like as a maintainer. You can if you're a lieutenant of Linus, you cannot if there is no hierarchy and you're one of the n top dogs, because you share the burden between everyone for the whole, not just for your own shop. Everything that goes wrong is on the whole group.
And this exactly is a process thing, so it is of interest specifically for those that don't read code. For me, it doesn't matter much because I just read the code (though I was interested in the organization because I have a FOSS non-organization of my own to reflect.) So if this is realized only now, then the process wasn't monitored really, and it just becomes some blame game drama (no matter what the author intended.)
Also note that this shouldn't in any way be a disqualifier of the competence of maintainers in terms of maintenance. Just the organization per definition sucks if it's unorganized. I don't know anyone that got this right. I don't know of any project of significance that got to be unorganized, or democratic, or otherwise decentralized. And it's because the repo structure forces some centralization. IMHO, the only way to decentralize (the protocol) is to have "competing" implementations, not decentralize a single implementation. But... maybe I am wrong. Multiple implementations isn't a silver bullet either.
You don't strike me as confrontational and I hope my reply didn't sound aggrieved. This is a very interesting topic to me and one that I'm very grateful you are willing to share your views on...because you clearly have a lot of experience in the FOSS realm and the Bitcoin realm. Text is very low bandwidth, and so it is hard to gauge tone some times. But I do not find your notes confrontational in the least.
The point you make about a single repo being a necessarily hierarchical structure is excellent. And it is confusing to me that two or three years ago (whenever burak broke btcd) and there was some small momentum for an interest in alternative clients, the popular response was one of: "we must match the reference client bug for bug."
But even if we venture down a path with several real implementations of Bitcoin, the speculation of my earlier response was that users probably won't achieve much good by concerning themselves with the inner clique drama of whatever project they choose to use.
Life may be better for us all if we adopt a culture that has the attitude that those who haven't put in the work really look crude or impolite when they concern themselves with the gossip.
Similarly, if Jon’s work spoke for itself, he wouldn’t be out there whining about being treated unfairly every week, would he? Then Hodlonaut would also reference the amazing contributions Jon made by name rather than to only point at his commit count.
I appreciate Atack's recent statements. He seems yo be a person who has put in the work and so I wouldn't call it "whining."
I'm less convinced that Hodlonaut has the grounds to evaluate some of this drama.
My point isn't that no one should talk about it, but rather that I will evaluate the opinions of people who speak about Core drama with the lens of how seriously they have contributes to the project.
Look not only at superficial statistics, but also open some of his reviews and pull requests. You will see pattern: first small documentation fix, chasing typo fix, then Concept ACK with little “nit” suggestions for improvement. It is looking very good on github profile and for grant applications, but does not give much excitement to other core developers…
I can see how it is interpreted as whining. It's unaddressed grief that lingered, so it's impossible to fix now. There are things to be learned though, so it's still good to look at it if you're looking to improve.
I'm just another a-hole that took the "verify" part to heart really. You see, the most amazing thing in the entire story of jonatack is that it took 2 years for him to be really worked against. I wouldn't last 2 weeks before being puked out.
Agreed, but the keyword in there is
drama. I truly do think that the process should be monitored. And wrong moves be called out. Because you don't establish trust during the good times, but in those of crisis. And you still want to verify in an ongoing matter anyway, this is Bitcoin.Or at least care more about informed opinions.
Is this like hardcore bitcoin