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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @theariard OP 31 Oct \ parent \ on: No. There is zero need for BIP 444. bitcoin
Read a lot on the subject, not only Strauss's book.
Bruno Leoni's Freedom and the Law is a great one too.
0 sats \ 2 replies \ @theariard OP 30 Oct \ parent \ on: No. There is zero need for BIP 444. bitcoin
I believe I have read Leo Strauss's Natural Law & History.
This doesn't answer how you would solve conflict if let's say you and @Darthcoin have a conflict because you have both different interpretation of the "natural law".
Here I bet you're going to fall back in the millenary old intractable conflict between natural and positive law...
0 sats \ 4 replies \ @theariard OP 30 Oct \ parent \ on: No. There is zero need for BIP 444. bitcoin
Thanks, I'm not unfamiliar with constitutional law and I do remember the triade a population, a government, a territory.
There is no answer on my second question of how your community of cypherpunks would administer and resolve disputes among themselves on a territory (?).
0 sats \ 6 replies \ @theariard OP 30 Oct \ parent \ on: No. There is zero need for BIP 444. bitcoin
First question, at which degree of interactions a community of cypherpunk, which accumulate resources and "master arms" on a territory (?), start to be a self-"government" of its own.
Second question according to which principles those cypherpunks would solve disputes among themselves. If you answer the principles of the ones who has the most AK-47s in the hands, this sounds very familiar to me to the Italian cities in the Middle Age.
I'll leave you to meditate on those subjects.
In the meanwhile, I'll go to finish Max Weber's Politik als Beruf and meditate on the zen philosophy of Bouddha.
1000 sats \ 9 replies \ @theariard OP 30 Oct \ parent \ on: No. There is zero need for BIP 444. bitcoin
Take my viewpoint as mostly applying to major European countries and the US. In those countries, there is something called rule of law, albeit imperfect of course and not always respected, but in principle rule is law is strictly framing any prosecution.
Any traffic “crime”, be it human trafficking, child pornography, drugs dealing, war weapons dealing, pirated movies or whatever needs material actions committing the reprehensible actions and knowledge of said actions.
There is no such thing as “potential abusers”. Either someone by its actions has fulfilled the legal framework incriminating a said “crime” and as such that person is liable from prosecution. Or that person has not committed said “crime”. Especially in criminal matters, where legal incriminations are of strict interpretation.
To go back to your example of something illegal happening in New York City. In a bunch of NYC streets, you can go to find all kind of drug dealers. Does it make anyone walking in those streets or even accidentally seeing a drug deal happening a complice of said drug dealer ? The answer, drawing from (centuries) of court cases, is obviously no -- one has to commit deliberate materials actions in that sense.
May I invite you to have a reading of the major legislations in US or Europe on “crime” committed through the transit of an online service providers, and how the responsibility of said service providers are strictly scoped. Theirs responsibilities are only engaged in case of no-cooperation with a judicial authority, when a specifically designated “crime” instance is happening or might have happened.
In that sense, I can only invite you to have a survey of decisions on online decisions matters yielded by the US Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights or the Court of Justice of the European Union (e.g Ahmet Yildirim v Turkey App no 3111/10 18 December 2012). In all those decisions, the judge don’t say freedom of expression is absolute, rather they use standard heuristics to make a balance among competing interests (freedom of expression, right of intellectual property, public order, etc).
So far there has never been decisions saying that absolute and timely unbounded technical filters that would deprive some of their usage of Internet and therefore of its freedom of expression. This is even the contrary, if an absolute filter would not be able to dissociate legal contents from illegal content, it should not be introduced as it’s encroaching too much on freedom of expression (CJUE, 26-04-2022, aff C‑401/19).
Again, in the present situation, I’m understanding and maybe I’m misunderstanding your arguments so feel free to correct. But I’m understanding it’s like if you were the New York Times editorial board, which is a private company, you would take the initiative by all technical means to try to censor what the Washington Post, USA Today or the Los Angeles Times have decided to publish in their own private publications.
No, in case of obviously illegal content you would seen published in the Los Angeles Times, the right move would to notify some law enforcement authority, and let those people do their jobs. This is not for nothing that anyone working at the average law enforcement authority or judicial authority in a role of responsibility would have followed years of training and studies, most of the time something like 5 years of studies
Sadly, Internet is giving too often the (false) impression that one can be an expert in any topic, including legal matters, and this without real training or practical experience.
Now, if you think that a local or international law governing what one can say or publish in a Bitcoin block is far too lax, as it’s not fitting your specific viewpoint, you’re free to engage in political lobbying in Washington D.C or Bruxelles or whatever any other hub of other worldwide regulatory area. But, I’m humbly believe we start to be very far from Bitcoin protocol design and a cypherpunk write code ethos...
And I’m saying all of this with a mark of intellectual respect for anyone working or hacking on Bitcoin Knots, everyone knows that I can be highly critical of Bitcoin Core too at times. Be sure I’m always trying to favor a meritocracy of ideas and open discussion of said objective ideas and facts over tribalism.
Sure, while my criticism is coming more as an insider, than as an external "onlookers", I believe that whatever the category you belong to, insider or onlooker one can find surprising that Brink has not already independence provisions in its contracts employment with the Bitcoin Core contributors on its payroll. At least for the most senior contributors on its staff.
In my view, independence is not something you remind when a controversy has already arised. By then, it's a little delicate to reach out and say "Independent review and open discussion are critical for Bitcoin Core". If you had to say and remind it explicitly, it's probably because it was not fully clear in your eyes and in the mind of the professional Bitcoin Core contributors on Brink's payroll.
In my humble opinion, independence is a point that should be fully clear in the minds of everyone involved. Having that kind of provisions in contracts employment obviously tight the hands of everyone, but I believe I can say that the outcome you wish when controversial topic happens like OP_RETURN. In all this matter, I think it got inflated a lot, partially because in the view of a lot of plebs and full-node operators, right or wrong, some professional Bitcoin Core contributors might have taken technical positions to satisfy some corporate interests.
If any it's of interest to you, I can share in private "independence" provisions I have
spent time and effort to legally craft for myself in my professional endeavors, and as such keep my speech and actions free in matters of bitcoin development.
Apologies again if my tone is a bit rigid. Still I do remember when Brink in its rough
lines was shared to me as a more consistent idea during a picnic on the grass of Long Island city, kinda end of May 2020. cc @schmidty
Finding time to answer more in length.
Sure, I would like to make one observation about your pull request comment on the independence disclaimer on the standing, funding and employment w.r.t Brink of some professional contributors to Bitcoin Core.
I think it’s a good initiative to make such disclaimer and remind that in the situation of controversial topics like OP_RETURN and mempool policy, any Bitcoin Core professional contributor currently employed by Brink is fully entitled to his plain freedom of review and open discussions.
However, as someone with experience with the (bitcoin) open-source world, one, or at least me, I find it surprising that Brink don’t have independence provisions directly in their employment contracts with its employed professional contributors.
E.g historically, Bitmex open-source agreements had the following independence provision: “The Grantor agrees not to use the grant as influence to encourage the Grantee to support or implement particular changes to the Bitcoin protocol rules on block validity”.
In my view, it’s not exactly the same tangible level of independence, when a director of an open-source non-profit has to take the initiative to notify by email all its grantees that they’re free to engage as they wish on a controversial technical subject, than when said grantees have de jure independence provisions in their employment contracts to express themselves on controversial technical subjects.
Independence should be the default, not something you have to communicate when the subject of controversy has already been raised.
Apologies by advance if it sounds a very rigid observation — but I do remember when Brink was just a very vague idea pitched to me in a Harlem breakfast early 2020. cc @schmidty
Maybe also consider “symbolic execution” for fuzzing, there are numerous structures in Bitcoin consensus that are quite unique, e.g the Segwit pattern in themselves (
<OP_0> <20-byte-key-hash>) and that is probabilistically very low when you generate input in a blind fuzzing approach.By the way, you didn’t answered here: #1233827
Disclaimer: I am the executive director of Brink, an organization that funds some Bitcoin Core developers, some of which may review this PR. I have emailed them separately letting them know that any review feedback here (positive or critical) will not impact their standing, funding, or employment with Brink. Independent review and open discussion are critical for Bitcoin Core, and Ive encouraged them to engage as they would with any other contributor.
If I can formulate few keen & kinds observations on that, as you’re opening the door. cc @schmidty. Back in the days, I can attest it’s a subject we have seriously spent lengthy time to think about it with Gleb Naumenko.
Can you expand on this difference of viewpoints and especially summarize Steve's viewpoint in a way that he would agree with? This point seems to be interesting.
Answer more substantially in my other new comment.
Further one piece that would be useful for summary - could you give some summary stats on your contribution to rust-lightning?
From 2018 to 2023, when I voluntarily started to put myself out of the LDK as protestation of the LDK (commit 84ee92cb71) , here the top excerpt of
git shortlog -s -n 3331 Matt Corallo
398 Jeffrey Czyz
343 Valentine Wallace
277 Antoine Riard
133 Wilmer Paulino
96 Elias Rohrer
86 valentinewallace
This doesn’t represent all the testing and review time spent on others folks PRs, neither that my commits were also in the delicate parts of the codebase (i.e the on-chain backend).
Professionally, I’m always putting more the emphasis on “is the code correct and is the shit going to fly in production ?” than meeting the tick for the corporate trimestrial deadlines. Been in bitcoin since a while, and I’ve also seen few security nightmares also happening in the smart contract shitcoin world...
Thanks for the courteous answer too.
I'll start by bringing more information on the table, as it might highlight
and explain why there has been a swarm of codes of conduct suddenly popping
up between 2022 to 2024 across Bitcoin Core and Lightning.
This is information which is clearly known to the insiders and veterans of
the bitcoin open source stage, though for an outsider and the wider public
I don't think it's really known. End of 2021, John Newbery, a prominent and
prolific contributor to Bitcoin Core at the time and the co-founder of Brink,
was "put in vacation" (i.e fired from its organization Brink) for let's say
inter-personal issues.
This is clearly the kind of issues in life which is not black and white,
I'll pretend that I don't know what exactly did happen, as after all I'm
not directly concerned, though I had the versions from the antagonist
parties. John Newbery has a big personality for sure, but if I'm asked
my humble viewpoint, I would say some people, who were not formally trained
to handle that kind of situation, did panic to take a quick decision rather
than slow down and ask concretely and factually what did happen.
Anyway, with that element in mind, early 2022, Spiral, leaded by Steve Lee
and who has been previously a financial backer of Brink at the autumn of
2020, started to insert "morality provision" in all their open-source grants.
Moving forward, we're in October 2022, during the TabConf in Atlanta, where
I'm present in person for the edition of CoreDev happening ahead of the conference.
In the aftermath of CoreDev, during the conference, Steve Lee asked me to have
a conversation in private, and we go to have it in the Olympic Park, hidden
in the back of a flower bed, as he was fearing to be seen or heard by other
people from the conference.
Steve Lee told me he has heard "gossips" on my account related to open-source
matters, and he confront me on that. I've known Steve since late 2018, before
he joined Spiral (formerly Square Crypto) so coming from him I'm okay to listen
to his viewpoint. However, Steve has only a partial and distorded view of the
facts at the source of the "gossips", and as I know perfectly what I'm doing
and I'm behaving, even in delicate situations, I do ask him concretely what
is ethically wrong. Of course, ethics is not like "moral" an absolute, and
it's more a matter of degree. Though anyone who knows me a bit in the industry,
knows I have rather a very strong sense of ethics - primum non nocere.
Contrary to Steve, I've not done my whole career in the technology field,
and even if he's like older than me by few decaces, I do have a wider diversity
of professional experience and a more multi-dimensional training. Steve keeps
going forward talking about his professional experience at Google. He says
litterally to me phrases like "you know when I was at Google, I was dating
a lot of women", "you should be careful in the middle of open-source, some
people are in a lot of boards" and "when I was at Google, there was a code
of professional conduct".
I'm still patienly and calmly listening. I do understand he's expecting
me to bow to his viewpoint, but my only answer to him is "concretely what's
the problem ?". He stays silent. The conversation is ending on a "thumb your
nose" and he mumbles about a "token of good faith". We end up the conversation
there.
No discussion on clear principles. No discussion on concrete ethics, all
"wiggling your ass" style of conversation from Steve as he gives me the
impression that himself he wasn't clear in his own consciousness about
the principles that he should abide by.
I'm keeping some business elements for some stuff that was ongoing at Block
Inc at the time out of the scope, though in the great lines, I think it's
factually correct of what did happen. Apart this disagreement, I must say
we had generally very correct professional interactions from 2018 to 2022.
So to resume the Steve Lee's perspective, I think we disagreed on "how
do we solve divergence of viewpoints on social or cultural matters ?".
But from my perspective, he wasn't free to speak his mind as he was
under constraint from Block Inc's corporate rules at all time.
For the Matt's perspective, I do think it's more stupidly stupid. Matt
was perfectly aware about what did happen with the John Newbery's thing
end of 2021. I do think he has been asked by Block Inc's HR department
to put in place a code of conduct in place in rust-lightning / LDK end
of 2022. He did so in the most non-transparent and non consensus-based
fashion, at the "CoC committee" was opaquely pre-appointed, all staffed
by people in direct or indirect financial subordination towards Block Inc.
Where we disagree with Matt, it's clearly that I have no wish to "comply"
to a stupid code of conduct only dictated by Block Inc corporate interests,
and not more respectful of the other rust-lightning / LDK contributors.
The question is never about guaranting an "inclusive and diverse" community
of contributors, whatever this can mean but it's always compliance. I do
estimate myself also insulted by the attitude of Matt, as when you know
the personal and professional life of Matt, it's a complete joke Matt pretending
to make lessons on ethics…
This sounds a bunch of inter-personal issues, though at the same time, I’m very mindful, at the end of the day, it’s the same group of people which is dealing with sensitive issues that might impact in cascade the financial safety and privacy of thousands of users all over the world. I do put the interest of the average end user and bitcoin holder, before the interest of any corporation.
Anyway, that's my viewpoint I could add far more, though I have to go !
I’m 100% that one should lead with humility.
For the apology, I’m yet have to convince the other side is playing fair.
No problem to withdraw some useless ad hominem, the day there is willingness for dialogue.
Why do you think you have to prove that?
Always good to advocate the virtues of dialogue.
What will you do if the people you target will take 20 years to agree with you? What if it will never happen?
I don’t know man, that’s so much questions and I don’t have answer to everything.
But I know it’s Friday late of day in my timezone, so I’ll will certainly go to boxe and go for beers after that.
Not the approach I would take in a collaborative working environment but everyone is different.
Curious, how you would approach more the issue if you were in my shoes.
What is it that you want to achieve?
Near-term, proving to the community I’m not the one who is refusing the dialogue.
There has been a refusal Day 1 from Rusty Russell to engage and discuss my arguments on the lack of fairness and due process about the Lightning BOLTs CoC establishment.
How will you work with these people? What would that look like?
Get to the point where they understand and have internalized that fairness and due process matters if you wish to have peaceful conflict resolution among a social group, which is true too for open-source community.
"how do we solve dispute among human beings in the middle of bitcoin open-source ?” that the point that need alignment.
My General View on Open-Source Communications
This is true that this post questioning Rusty Russsell open-source ethics and real independence is more akin to a Reddit flamewar, than a real post engaging the dialogue on sound abstract principles and factual arguments. This is also true that the communication style could be more diplomatic, one's communication style can be always more diplomatic and slow-paced.
On the general communication as a discipline to study I'm 100% agree with you, and for information, that's a field I have of course study in the past. Though one learning is
to have real communication happening there is a pre-requisite to have a neutral public
forum, where each side in the disputatio can express ideas, arguments, viewpoints and experiences.
That's the problem with open-source, there is no such neutral public forum, and when
you're attempting to use the forum or communication channel, which is the most similar to that, i.e Github, very often, the ones who have the administrative permission on it will leverage said permission to cut short the discussion and enforce their viewpoint.
On the wider point, and comparing my style of communication with Jeremy's one. Very deliberately I have always kept my communication style dried and sober. I'm not like Matt Corallo and Rusty Russell, who are constantly spending their time on podcast or Twitter doing a dance of trust to remind their "100% certified open-source devs” and as such that there are necessarily "pure".
On my side, I'm not on Twitter, I'm doing very rarely podcasts and I've never tried
to sell a "purity" narrative, but I hope, not always, treaded any other human beings
with high standard of ethics and dignity and never used communication technology or
the separation due to the screen as a prextet to act differently that I would do in
the meatspace. Never say something to someone online, if you're not ready to hold the same discourse eyes in the eyes in person. Simple mantra.
So as an open-source developer, I do think a sobriety in expression driven by a
constant search for objective truth should be one's personal ethic of communication.
(— apologies for the formatting of the text messages).
The Source of Misalignment
This is a far simpler topic to explain. In my view the source or question of misalignment can be explained in the following fashion: "how do we solve dispute among human beings in the middle of bitcoin open-source ?". Open source is as much about code and technical problems than it is about humans.
Of course, at that stage, one could point out, that I'm free to go and fork on Lightning,
but this doesn't solve the problem as when we work on a technical standard the idea is to have a group of human taking technical decisions to have inter-compatibility among different softwares versions. Inter-compatibility sounds a simple technical story, in practice it can be back to a social problem when there is a bug in software bit versioning or basic negotiating mechanism (-- and yes I've always found that style of bugs in Lightning and more than once).
Further, it doesn't solve the wider problem when one has to handle severe security vulnerabilities affecting not only Lightning, but also the wider bitcoin ecosystem of off-chain protocols (there are intersections in the security models). When I'm finding a serious vulnerability on Lighthning, including c-lightning, I'm the one who has to trust Rusty Russell to not abuse with this sensitive information during the period of embargo. After all, it has not always been all peaceful between Blockstream and Lightning Labs in the past (the flamewar on AMP in 2022).
So how do we solve dispute in the middle of open-source ? I don't pretend to have all the answers, but doing "coup" with code of conduct, ignoring basic fairness and due process, not acknowledging one's own bias in matter of one should act impartialy, abusing administrative permission on communication channel, self-appointing friends or subordinate in a coc committee, using dilatory tactic like refusing to engage in good faith on the subject on common channel, I'm really doubtful this is the way.
Be certain, I've never questioned that the developers are somehow the most legitimate to administer their own conflicts. What I've always questioned is the lack of tangible due process and formal impartiality of the ones administering the conflict resolution. Rushing by “surprise" to the administrative permission one is vetted on a communication channel to ban first one’s "opponent" is not a viable solution.
Those tactics work, when the ones in charge of the administrative permission are also the most technically skilled and talented, but I don't think that Matt Corallo or Rusty Russell can make the straight claim there are more technically talented than I am or have more know-how about Lightning than I have.
So I'll re-ask the question again, "how do we solve dispute among human beings in the middle of bitcoin open-source ?".
Thanks for your thoughtful and cool heads message.
This is true that this post a bit of a Reddit flamewar and it doesn't substantially
trying to level up the conversation on the principles and point of real divergence.
Goiing further, I'll answer and try to adress all your points in 3 separate sections:
-
- remind the context of the dispute
-
- point out what is the source of the misalignement
-
- express my general view about open-source communication
The Context of the Dispute
Back in 2018, I started to contribute on Lightning and rust-lightning (now LDK).
At the time, rust-lightning was a small projet, and it was only mostly TheBlueMatt
and myself doing the work. My interest to contribute to the projet at the time was
to have a community-driven open-source Lightning implementation, at the image of
Bitcoin Core rather than an implementation leaded and supported by a single entreprise like it was the case at the time (lnd -> Lightning Labs, c-lightning -> Blockstream, eclair -> ACINQ).
I do think it was a noble goal, at the very least an interesting opportunity to
learn about Lightning and develop my skills about off-chain stuff. Somehow this
works very well, as I went to the point of being able to contribute significantly
to the protocol design and fulfill some technical blind spots.
In mid-2019, TheBlueMatt joined Square Crypto and for a while I was the only one who
kept working on rust-lightning and go to represent the project at conferences and other events. Beginning of 2020, Square Crypto announced they would focus on rust-lightning as their main project, as the part of the wider Square Up (now Block Inc) bitcoin ecosystem.
At the time, I took positively the announcement, especially due to the personality of
Steve Lee, that I've already met before he joined Square Crypto, and who appears honest in his intent to make rust-lightning a community-driven multi-stakeholder like Bitcoin Core used to be at the time.
Fast-forward to mid-2021, and few thousands more of rust-lightning hacking and hours of reviews, the Square Crypto team started to be under commercial pressure to finally deliver something valuable back to Square Up, most notably make rust-lightning sufficiently production-ready for integration in Cash App, and by the same, in my view justify their engineering salary since mid-2019.
I let that float during end of 2021, especially as mid-2021 I was busy organizing the
first CoreDev on the bitcoin core side in the middle of a once-in-a-hundred pandemic,
with the clear intent to do the best to ensure the wider bitcoin open source culture to
stay convivial. Interactions online are one thing, seeing people face to face is another
thing and somehow if it avoids useless civil war in bitcoin, that's a good thing.
Moving to mid-2022, Square Crypto, now Spiral was all flame in in rushing forward the
project to deliver more value back to its solo financial backer Block Inc. In October
2022, there was a small altercade between Steve Lee, Matt Corallo and myself for a
ethical question related to my open-source work.
Steve Lee confronted me in person, one can be sure I patiently and calmly listened to
his viewpoint, but at the end I did see things differently. At the time I had already
a more prolific track records in Lightning security than Matt Corallo and I had the luxury to be independent and not hand-tight in binding to the economic interest of Block Inc.
Soon after, in December 2022, Matt Corallo made did a "coup" in rust-lightning, or at
least I'm still seing that as a "coup" in rust-lightning by, without any a priori public
announcement, establishing a code of conduct and auto-appointing people in this CoC committee who where on the Block Inc payroll.
I vehemently point out that this code of conduct was all about trying to control contributors, rather than building peaceful conflict resolution in the project, and denounced it didn’t respect fairness and due process norms, that one can find in any other social group.
Following this "coup" with a CoC, Matt unilaterally and non-transparently revoked my
merge bit on rust-lightning, my invitation to the Lightning Summit in 2023 was rescinded after I raised by email to Steve Lee and Jack Dorsey that the situation was ethically abnormal for open-source, and then I've seen my online handle being banned one by one of the communication channels of rust-lightning by abusive usage of the administrative permissions.
Back in 2024, when the subject started to land on the Lightning BOLTs, after I raised
the question why I was cancelled once more from the Lightning Summit of this year, Matt Corallo did engage in the same tactic of establishing a code of conduct and then banning my github account from the Lightning BOLT by seeding Rusty Russell in his version of the fact. Rusty is an open-source veteran, but he used to be colleague with Matt Corallo at Blockstream, a company where Matt was a co-founder and Rusty not. Blockstream, the employer of Rusty Russel, has also done public business partnership with Block Inc in the past.
In summary, that explains the situation of today. From my viewpoint.