reply on: Chaincode Labs is doing politics with Bitcoin consensus changes (CTV) \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @BITC0IN 6h \ on: Chaincode Labs is doing politics with Bitcoin consensus changes (CTV) bitcoin

I'm not sure either party in this case is guiltless.

Another comment on the situation from a Bitcoin Discord community member:

"The moderation rules are fucking ridiculous. They explicitly don't allow " not general criticism, or criticism of individuals or groups. Even the smartest people can have ideas that don't work out, and people with good intentions can make decisions that backfire. It does not add a lot of value generally to speculate about peoples motives or capabilities when discussing the merits of their ideas, and doing so will be considered off-topic in technical discussions." You can't be critical of an idea that is self serving for a company, you can't be critical of an idea because someones only interest is in using it to scam you apparently can't be critical of chaincode labs at all Fucking. Useless.

Delving Bitcoin has already banned me for commenting that a specific proposal to bundle a LNHANCE type set of BIPs together was an inappropriate bundling for a litany of explicit reasons. That apparently isn't technical enough. They will only accept positive constructive feedback about the proposal, not feedback that the proposal is inehrently inappropriate. The trouble is, those with control over the github community and delving bitcoin are the same small group of tight knit devs in a club. They don't want to hear dissenting oppinions from anyone, they aren't interested in having their biases illustrated for them. They frequently take this out on any dissenter, regardless of merit. A common example being Luke. For example as relates to taking over his own repo and translations from him. They use broad moderation policies like those cited above as an excuse to silence any criticism at all. It's just about getting a handful of people in their little club to assent that Luke is a troll, or I am a troll, or whoever is telling them that we need a flag day fork is a troll - and they can dismiss them. Including and regardless of active development activity as we see in both the Luke and Ariard examples. Ideas aren't discussed on merit, as the moderation policy pretends to enshrine - what happens is if you hurt someones feelings or you propose an idea the club doesn't like, you're removed. We see it time and again. the LOT true debate being another prime example. Or the blocksize wars debate over UASF All of that discussion was entirely silenced by Core. all code and technical discussion, silenced. once the IRC meeting was had and the idea shot down by the little club in spite of active and reasoned opposition, that's that. in every. single. instance. Core devs even use it, as noted, to impact consensus decisions!

It's totally inappropriate. A power grab by a development community that by design has none. These policies should be revoked. The core dev team need look no further than its own practices for why engagement is faltering. I don't feel welcome to engage there"

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @theariard OP 30m

I'm not sure either party in this case is guiltless.

I do wish to insinuate there is something like "guiltiness" on the part of Chaincode folks.

Pure incompentency yes. Guiltness no.

One has to zoom out that we're in a community of developers spread all over the world, where there is no really strong cultural norms, and there has been a lot of traumas from all sides due to the block size war.

I'll not enter into the details of this post, I'll just add the more info from the viewpoint of an insider, and who knows quite well the ins and outs.

Somehow, from my perspective this is a failure of the development culture as it has been nurtured over the last ~8 years, when the majority of bitcoin core developers have started to be on "no-string-attached" style of funding grants.

This is something I can talk about, because I've not only been a beneficiary of that style of funding in the past (and I quite deliberately of my own), I’ve seen the massive influx of grants becoming the industry norm circa 2020, and I’ve been few times called to give my opinion in matters of grant attribution (funny enough on someone who is at Chaincode now).

But the problem there is quite flagrant, once you've seen how few grant attributions are effectively made, sure most of the time there is technical code works but the "social" factor plays a lot. If you're friendly with the grant committee or sharing their ideological bias, or their view on "inclusivity" most of the time at equal technical work, you will be the one doing the grant. And everyone in a grant committee will try to draw the cover towards their own interest, e.g favor open-source work needed for their commercial endeavors on another title. And they might not be transparent on their conflict of interests towards their committee co-chairs.

I'm not saying that if you're the girlfriend or boyfriend of someone influent in a grant committee (we have straights, gays and bi among the devs saying this with some distant), you'll be sure to have a "grant" in priority over other folks, who might have a stronger track records than yours...but you see...

Developers are human beings, and I have my own bias like any one else. It's a constant work to be careful about situations where you could be in conflict of interest, or act ethically very early on some topics, even if it's become an issue even years and years after. Do no trust, verify.

The present situation has been worsened by the csw cases, which is a sad fact for sure and something we all agree on, where few bitcoin FOSS veterans have seen their legal fees covered mainly by 2 organizations in this industry. If it has not generated a direct economical subordination, it certainly has generated a sentiment of "debt" among some bitcoin FOSS veterans, and as such those people might be more incline to give leeway to Chaincode for things like the moderation guidelines.

I fully understand their positions their and I've myself shared valuable info to harden any defensive litigation info when the BDFL was announced in Q1 2022 in a "this is a problem for all of us" mindset. Though, yes when you’re an open-source devs and you become used to turn yourself towards Big Boys to solve all your problems, including legal fees for your actions, that's it’s only generating dependency and subordination.

Again, I fully understand them, serious legal trouble can be a real burden, and here I'm not talking about the bullshit Alex's attorney's letter, I’ve seen worst in my experience.

However, that's latent subordination one can only wonder if it's not playing when during a IRC meeting there is only ~13 folks ACKing the moderation guidelines.

Burnout in the open-source world is of course a serious topic and somehow why I’ve not been formally opposed to civility or courtesy rules on the bitcoin core github repository. In my opinion, when you have to tread with the utmost civility anyone who is a maintainer it’s a hard job. But it doesn’t mean you cannot talk truth to them, and they have any legitimacy in leveraging github permissions to silence your view.

It’s only making things more inflated.

Let's be frank, no one give will grant you independence in your role as dev or as a maintainer, certainly not for anything related to consensus change or your "developer self-sovereignity" in this space. This is something you have to push for, with your grit, your talent and your work ethics. Independence has to be built and fight for, it's never just "granted".