On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 1:01 PM, Justus Ranvier <justusranv...@gmail.com> wrote: > YOU can make promises about YOUR future behavior. So can everyone else. > > The rest of the community can keep track of which developers will and > will not make promises about what changes they will and will not > attempt to implement in Bitcoin, and they can use that information to > make informed decisions about which software they will choose to support.
I promise that if bad people show up with a sufficient pointy gun that I'll do whatever they tell me to do. I'll make bad proposals, submit backdoors, and argue with querulous folks on mailing lists, diverting them from real development and review work, all as commanded. Maybe I'll try to sneak out a warning of some kind, maybe... but with my life or my families or friends lives on the line— probably not. ... and I think that anyone who tells you otherwise probably just hasn't really thought it through. So what is the point of commitments like that? People change, people go crazy, people are coerced. Crap happens, justifications are made, life goes on— or so we hope. What matters is building infrastructure— both social and technical— that is robust against those sorts of failures. If you're depending on individual developers (including anonymous parties and volunteers) to be somehow made more trustworthy by some promises on a mailing list you've already lost. If you care about this you could instead tell us about how much time you promise to spend reviewing technical work to make sure such attacks cannot be successful, regardless of their origins. Where are your gitian signatures? I think thats a lot more meaningful, and it also improves security for everyone involved since knowing that such attacks can not succeeded removes the motivation for ever trying. A lot of what Bitcoin is about, for me at least, is building systems which are as trustless as possible— ruled by unbreakable rules embodied in the software people chose to use out of their own free will and understanding. Or at least thats the ideal we should try to approximate. If we're successful the adhomenim you've thrown on this list will be completely pointless— not because people are trusted to not do evil but because Bitcoin users won't accept technology that makes it possible. So please go ahead and assume I'm constantly being evil and trying to sneak something in... the technology and security can only be better for it, but please leave the overt attacks at the door. Think gentleman spies, not a street fighting death match. The rude attacks and characterizations just turn people off and don't uncover actual attacks. Maybe the informal guideline should be one flame-out personal attack per cryptosystem you break, serious bug you uncover, or impossible problem you solve. :) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Accelerate Dev Cycles with Automated Cross-Browser Testing - For FREE Instantly run your Selenium tests across 300+ browser/OS combos. Get unparalleled scalability from the best Selenium testing platform available Simple to use. Nothing to install. Get started now for free." http://p.sf.net/sfu/SauceLabs _______________________________________________ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
