This is 100% the point the “trust me bro committee”.

Let’s add a bit more of fact-based context. From my experience I don’t think the majority of Lightning developers and engineers contributing to the protocol development are woke, by what we usually understand under those terms. There is a clear vocal minority embodying wokeness, of which I think Mr. Corallo and its utmost superior Mr. Dorsey are constitutive (not even all the folks at Spiral or Block Inc in my opinion, some are clearly not woke). I’ve met Mr. Dorsey in-person too in the past, so I’m talking with good knowledge of the facts.

Of course, I do not question one’s to hold political opinion including woke ones, especially in the US with the 1st Amendment, as long it does not interfere with the professional domain and conversations about objective technical reasons.

Now among those silent Lightning developers and engineers, given the current majority mode of funding of Bitcoin open-source large, i.e the research grants and other similar type of employments, most of those silent Lightning engineers are fearing to speak up on those issues, or at least express what they’re really thinking in public by some anxiety to be singled out when it’s time of their next open-source grant renewal (— or find their next job, potentially at Block Inc). That’s one fundamental issue with how grants are allocated today, the criteria of allocations are very nebulous or opaque (I can think only non-profit org that start to be more transparent on how they’re allocating each grant individually). So generally it helps if you have “friends” in the open-source grant committee to get your new grants for the ones making a career in bitcoin open-source development (or speaking more frankly to do the “sucker”). Let’s remind the very active role that Mr. Dorsey is playing in the funding of the Bitcoin open-source stage (somehow to his positive credit, it’s not a “black-and-white” situation).

To this phenomena of the youngest Lightning protocol devs being reticent to express on those issues by apprehension of some fireback on their professional careers, there is the other phenomena of the “Old Guard” of historic developers on the Bitcoin Core implementation, which have seen their legal fees covered by the Bitcoin Defense Legal Fund in the series of CSW cases, this initiative also being partially funded by Mr. Dorsey.

So in my view this group of people, which are technically skilled, with some years of veteranship to express themselves with more depth and breadth on open-source culture are also deliberately staying silent on those issues (apart of one or two from them), to not seing themselves excluded from being legally represented in the still finishing series of CSW cases (here more likely a “self-chilling” effect than a threat that has been effectively pronounced).

Back to the topic of wokeness, the problem with this philosophy where its advocates are ready to commit bunch of tactics (phone calls in private, self-appointed morally righteous committees, private admonestations to the “code of conduct” penitents, usage of a double-standard to appreciate “moral” infringment, etc) it doesn’t fly very well under the spotlight and publicity. There are reasons all the woke measures have generally lose in front of US courts, being in 1st instances or circuits of appeal. Blue or red juges they’re fundamentally used to the notion of “due process”. In the meanwhile, a vocal minority of developer(s) and stakeholder(s) is sustaining a deleterious culture in bitcoin open-source stage…

That’s the frank state of things under my view — And why I think it’s indeed very interesting to have a US court of justice have a say on what “decentralization” effectively means in an open-source project by litigating Mr. Corallo.