Replies: 14 comments 43 replies
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@jamesob one question I have is, do you want this code to be merged or are you just polling for feedback / CI testing? |
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My personal view is that, if you are not willing to accept conceptual review, you can't expect a PR in bitcoin/bitcoin to be merged. If this is what is being asked for then, in my opinion, you are effectively just asking for free review from our limited resources and on reflection I think that would be best done elsewhere. @jamesob it would be great if you could clarify what you are looking for from that PR being open (either here or in the PR), as there is some confusion regarding it's purpose, if conceptual review is not wanted. |
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I'd like the PR to eventually be merged, but of course I don't have any misunderstanding that more people will need to buy in conceptually before that happens. Having an up-to-date patch that is current against master and passing the fairly labyrinthine Core CI process is also a tangible artifact that allows interested contributors to review the proposal in detail. In the past, a lack of PR (or one that is out of date) has been used as an argument against the readiness or maturity of a proposed consensus change. |
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PR comments in general should follow https://github.com/bitcoin-core/meta/blob/main/MODERATION-GUIDELINES.md In particular, staying on topic, commenting about code and not people. |
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Great! In that case it's reasonable to post on the PR signed messages by a majority of the hash rate indicating they are running an activation client and also provide BIP9 statistics (or whatever the mechanism is) guaranteeing the lock-in. |
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I didn't follow this discussion, sorry for jumping right in the middle, but who is "we"? @moonsettler, it looks like you are talking on behalf of a group of people that control the Bitcoin network. I don't mind that but I can see how people could find it odd. Personally I would use a phrasing like "There is a good chance CTV gets activated before this is merged into Bitcoin Core". |
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I mean it's fairly obvious activations can fail if there is a lack of consensus. Also fairly obvious that I don't control bitcoin. Just context for reading what i wrote. |
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I think a good guideline when reading and moderating written communication is to assume good intentions and, when in doubt, interpret in a positive or generous way. |
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Well I'm personally super jaded and blackpilled, but will make an attempt at a more positive energy on github. |
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How do we moderate consensus changes in general? |
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In addition to #12 (reply in thread), it seems valuable to give everyone an opportunity to express themselves and to feel heard (within reasonable limit). This may seem trying and long, but is probably important, provided there is an appropriate place for it that doesn't derail technical review. |
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Welllllll... is that what PR review comments are for? In my opinion, expressing opinions about consensus changes happens in other forums, and by the time a PR is open, that consensus is (should be) clear. If it is not clear, a valid comment would be "concept NACK, proof of community consensus not provided..." or something like that. |
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I agree with @mzumsande in #12 (comment). |
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Separating conceptual discussion from code review could also be done within the repo - e.g. have an issue for the conceptual discussion and the PR for code review. I would prefer that to outsourcing the conceptual discussion to third-party sites like delving. |
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I think the counter argument to this is that consensus changes are much bigger than one single software project. |
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Right. I recall that for the taproot softfork, an IRC channel was created for discussing the change along with the organized review sessions, and then later another one for the activation discussion. Both were active for months IIRC. |
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Delving forum belongs to AJ, right? |
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@pinheadmz I’ll recall that we’re talking about consensus changes on a $2T financial ecosystem, and given that you have administrative control of this Github repository in the name of moderation, if something goes wrong and there are massive financial loss in the Bitcoin ecosystem due to the centrality of Bitcoin Core as a software in the industry, I do no think Alex Morcos’s lawyers will be able to prevent him to end in jail. |
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Bitcoin Core is an open-source project: No single entity controls Bitcoin, and users choose which software to run. |
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If any of this is true then we already lost. Bitcoin by design is pretty resilient to bad software changes. If wet paper hands panic sell their derivatives and incur massive financial loss that's entirely on them. |
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This is a pure lie, as the latest days have shown one entity can decide who is banned or who has access to the repository.
@moonsettler It’s unclear to me how we ensure that Bitcoin is pretty resilient to bad software changes, if some people are restraining the review process to fully qualified eyes for their own interest. Even when it’s something as immaterial as “fame” or “prestige”. After all it's not like one of the avowed goal of Chaincode is to be the Bell Labs of bitcoin, with all that it might imply about academic competition. If you’re familiar a bit with the history of the Bell Labs. |
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I’ll leave open the legal question if the said moderation rules, due to their abusive formalization and partial application do not have a chilling effect on the freedom of expression of contributors, and by incidence on the quality of software developed and in case of defects or bugs of this software this could constitute a direct liability on the moderation team, or their employers, as the moderators are not acting as independent agents. In the present case, for sure Alex and Suhas are not Satoshi Nakamoto, so their claims on any form of property of the original Bitcoin Core software hosted on this platform, or the administrative permissions of this platform repository are pretty limited. The software has been historically released under the MIT license with “The Bitcoin Core developers” as a copyright. I do not disagree in the absolute on the existence of rules. The episode in 2016 with Gavin showed that the absence of rules does not prevent the existence of conflicts. However, in my view there is an ongoing campaign of intimidation with the current moderation rules to discourage some “undesirables” contributors to participate in the development of Bitcoin. There has never been a transparent and formal vetting of those moderation rules by each individual contributor that have been historically a contributor to this project. A quick count with Git, show there have been ~1241 contributors since 2009, Satoshi, included, so I doubt the intellectual property rights of those 1241 contributors have been respected in the establishment of those moderation rules, and their legal validity is almost certainly void. That those moderation rules could have been vetted behind close doors at an invitation-only meeting (i.e Berlin 2024) is of little weight in matters of intellectual property rights. None of the current maintainers can be said to act as independent agents, as there are all either under employment status or grants, of which for grants the single funder model constitute a situation of economic dependency. While I do not care the maintainers choice about their professional careers, some professional status comes with a restriction in what you can do in terms of intellectual property of your work, so unless there are in their work contracts explicit mentions allowing them to act as independent agents about potential moderation rules, any vetting of the moderation rules cannot be considered independent. By extension this is same for any other historical contributors that could have been the beneficiary of indirect financial or material advantage (e.g CSW legal fees, even if it was well-intentioned). For this latter issue, that means that any contributor that can have vetted those moderation rules behind close doors cannot be considered as an independent vetting. All those facts on the existence of financial links among some group of historical contributors can be indeed brought as an argument in front of a court of justice. Going to prove that ~30 contributors as witnesses have financial links with each other is pretty easy to do, when most of the info is already public. This is not a concern on my side to go to litigate Alex and Suhas on their personal names, piercing the corporate veil of Chaincode Labs, to clarify the present situation on the validity of the current moderation rules. They will be challenged on (a) can you prove first you’re Satoshi Nakamoto ? and as it’s unlikely (b) on which authority are you’re asking any contributor to comply with those moderation rules ? The original Bitcoin Core software hosted in this repository is at best in the public domain or at worst under a clear MIT license with Satoshi as the main copyright holder. As I do not believe they’re acting with the written consent of Satoshi Nakamoto ([email protected]) in establishing those moderation rules and in asking for any other historical or potential contributor to comply with them, and as I’m not either Satoshi Nakamoto, this will be indeed an interesting open legal question. There are far enough legal grounds in both US and the EU major jurisdictions on which to base this challenge. Keeping a record of this thread for future legal proceedings. |
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The moderation rules were drafted an approved by pull request just like everything else we do, and the moderators themselves were nominated and ACKed in a public IRC meeting. I am recording all of your comments for legal defense, printing them out, mailing copies to multiple attorneys in various global jurisdictions and I have also called my senator just to be on the safe side. |
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That’s okay, your senator will be free to testify in case of any legal proceedings. Already met officials bigger than that in my life, I’m used to. |
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Moderation is hard and I think @pinheadmz is doing an excellent job. Thank you ❤️ |
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Words are cheap, when someone else is paying the burden of your open-source contributions. |
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Every time I try to push back on something in Core, I am met with inclinations to censor, gaslight and discredit me. Anytime people from outside Core make comments, Core is trying to figure out how to get rid of them. The issue is cultural. None of you have any authority, and only a few of you have the level of benevolent concern for users required to responsibly discuss changing Bitcoin code. I am just happy you didn't delete or ban me, so I can remind all of you about this next time you think you know what is best for everyone. All speculative complexity should be a no-brainer to reject as a PR to Core. C'mon, guys! |
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Side note: I have no interest in using delvingbitcoin, nor having to follow the conversations there. Please stop trying to push activity there. |
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I agree with this. Delving Bitcoin is a separate initiative and not directly related to Bitcoin Core. My previous point was to highlight this distinction. |
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@melvincarvalho and @BitcoinErrorLog I think the point is that bitcoin core is just one single software project and so discussions about the protocol in general are more appropriate in some other more global forum. We still have IRC and for years the linux foundation mailing list served this purpose. Sadly that was discontinued so the global discussions were moved to the google group email and delving. If you think consensus changes should be decided in bitcoin core pull request comments, I think you are declaring bitcoin core the ruler of the protocol and surrendering those discussions to the moderators and maintainers of that software project -- limiting discussion to focused, technical details.
Comments that you describe here will be deleted, and their authors banned, in accordance with the moderation guidelines. Comments are required to be technical, focused, and on topic. So if you are providing technical feedback on a proposed code change and are met with this type of personal attack, moderators or maintainers will step in. If that hasn't been happening, please let us know so we can ban who ever is attacking you personally in this repository instead of making technical comments about code changes. I'm wondering how you both would feel about opening a consensus-changing pull request to bcoin, btcd, bitcoin knots, or libbitcoin and having the activation discussion in one of those software repositories? Why or why not? |
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Re-read my post on the source PR. The idea that a pocket set of devs could make decisions about consensus, on any website, is absurd. All you can do is fantasize about it, then eventually work your fantasy into a stupor to persuade your dev friends to believe it as "consensus" despite literally being out of consensus. I am not trying to surrender anything to any pocket governance, I am trying to delete the idea it is real at all. Regarding comments moderated, well, you weren't around for past debates where I, and others, were gaslit to oblivion, so all I can do is hope you are more responsible, and understand that the people that matter most are not in these forums, and when they appear, are not aware of etiquette or any niche requirements of their behavior. I really appreciate my first comment on the PR still being there as a signpost. The funny thing about those other implementations you mentioned is that none of them ever formally proposed a consensus change! This is a Core cultural issue of self-righteousness and irresponsibility. I do not support speculative complexity in Bitcoin, regardless of the project, and sincerely believe there is an inherent blindspot and bias at play with the devs here. Go ahead and ask Eric Voskuil, of Libbitcoin, how he feels about consensus changes, and how he would design (out) forks into his project. He is someone this community should be idolizing, not ostracizing. |
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Then you chose the wrong side in 2017. Because that's the path bitcoin took, ever increasing technical complexity instead of the original scaling vision. |
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Except bcoin and extension blocks which had to be posted to the mailing list by lukedashjr because the proposal authors took their announcement directly to "the press" which (if I remember, not worth digging up links) caused a lot of bad blood among developers who felt that such a proposal should always start with a ML post. |
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Comments of mine have been taken down on Delving Bitcoin too for not being "agreeable" and I stopped commenting there. One comment that was deemed not agreeable was on a thread specifically discussing consensus changes at a high level (hence on topic): "You are assuming everyone who is working on things other than consensus rule proposals (including some of the people here) are wasting their time and not improving Bitcoin. It is such a laughable view. Demanding people divert their attention from their current priorities to a consensus rule “war” is just breathtakingly arrogant and shortsighted. Activating a soft fork with community consensus is a relatively minor headache in comparison to the headache of dealing with another consensus rule “war”." I share @BitcoinErrorLog's concern about external forums with their own set of moderators and moderating guidelines as stating opposing viewpoints are being censored under the guise of "agreeableness" (What does that even mean in this context? You must agree?) and so relying on those forums for a critical part of the Bitcoin Core PR review process, namely conceptual review of a PR, may give one sided perspectives. I have found it incredibly frustrating in the past that there seems to be a general bias across Delving, Optech etc towards subtly encouraging contentious soft fork activation attempts under the guise of agreeableness or faux neutrality and anyone who states basic facts on why these shouldn't be encouraged gets censored. However, I agree with @vasild that moderation is hard and I don't like to see legal threats being made to someone who appears to me to be making a good faith attempt to facilitate discussion and views being voiced within this repo so thanks for your efforts @pinheadmz. |
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ALL consensus changes are contentious when lacking overwhelming consensus across Bitcoin stakeholders. Contention isn't limited to devs you know that disagree, it is every single unaware user. We already have consensus on the live network, any changes are out of consensus, by definition. |
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No that's a completely unreasonable definition. Contentiousness is measured by the will to actively fight the effort to bring a change about. For example while taproot did not had adequate informed consent it was still completely not contentious. |
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Your logic is dangerously flawed. Silence isn't consent, it's ignorance, indifference, or simply absence. Taproot being pushed through without "adequate informed consent" isn't proof it wasn't contentious; it's proof stakeholders were steamrolled. Pretending uninformed users' silence equals agreement is manipulative and reckless. Consensus isn't measured by resistance; it's measured by active, explicit agreement. Anything else is just rationalizing coercion. Consensus is not "built" it is enforced. |
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I disagree with this statement. There were multiple years spent discussing the Taproot proposals: the BIPs, conceptually and code and there was no censorship that I was aware of. Unlike SegWit I do remember some limited opposition on quantum resistance/bare public keys though compared to today's proposals on covenant opcodes etc there was what I would deem overwhelming community consensus. I have been disappointed thus far though by the limited adoption of what the Taproot soft fork provided. If anything that is a lesson that loud voices pounding the drum for consensus changes often don't follow through with actually leveraging the features they have been demanding post activation. Hence default skepticism seems wise to me. |
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That's just an unreachable goal. Most people don't care until something affects them negatively. And that's perfectly alright. Participation is 100% opt-in and it's super easy to manufacture the appearance of controversy. It's just an ultra cheap sybil attack on social. Which is why after a certain point verbal contention becomes nothing but noise. That is why rough consensus through revealed preferences is the only way we could possibly progress. |
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No, the moderation rules are an artificial restriction on the right or genuine capability of anyone to contribute on bitcoin original client as it has been set by Satoshi Nakamoto. Apologies for the rude word, but if you have 10 folks in a room and the first 9 are consenting among themselves to collectively rapt the 10th one this is still a rapt. There is no defense to be made in face of a judge to say “we’re a group of 9, we all agreed to rape the 10th folk and it’s just the 10th folk who is to blame to not consent to her / his rapt”. The problem with the moderation rules is the lack of consent on the people they’re applied to. Talking truth none of the current maintainers are Satoshi. For how a code of conduct can interact badly with the real-world of legal courts just go to ask Peter Todd. |
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So if I pick a random org/repo on GitHub and open an issue there to discuss bitcoin consensus the owners of that repo would be committing rape by closing the issue as off topic?
I don't recall a story like this. Got a link? |
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No, because it was an analogy to understand that in social life, an arbitrary decision of the “majority” (this is not the ~1241 contributors from However applying the moderation rules on contributor to the bitcoin consensus rules on this repository who do not consent to the moderation rules is a violation of a contributor right or genuine capability to contribute. If you know the legal heuristics to apply, even someone like Michael Folkson, who is not a maintainer and has no official janitorial role in the project, would be right to go after you Matthew Zipkin in front of US legal courts, if he disagrees with your moderation decision. This is very a low legal standard, that even Chaincode’s legal counsels should be able to figure out after all — if they’re competent that I’m less sure...
You should go to ask to Peter Todd here. |
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I am not a lawyer but it was fairly easy to find the following information in github's terms of use, which I assume anyone who creates an account here is beholden to: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-terms-of-service#c-acceptable-use
https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-community-guidelines
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Are you talking about the 2019 Lovecruft story? I didn't think there was a code of conduct per se involved in that. |
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You should go to ask Peter Todd here. |
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Open a PR to remove the MODERATION-GUIDELINES.md: After more information, there is no uncertainty that’s it’s completely legally dubious under both US and major European jurisdictions due the lack of consent of individual contributors to the rules (and actually far more countries...). |
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Moving meta discussion here.
If you have comments about the code changes, comment on the PR
If you have a concept ACK / NACK and an explanation, comment on the PR
If you want to discuss soft fork options and poll the broader community for consensus, comment on delving or the mailing list
If you want to discuss how moderators and maintainers are moderating comments on the PR, comment here.
Some contributors have already been blocked for 1 day and their comments hidden. I want to discuss that activity here, along with other participants in that thread:
@moonsettler @michaelfolkson @ariard @jamesob @1440000bytes @melvincarvalho @BitcoinErrorLog @willcl-ark @TheCharlatan @darosior
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