Quote from: poeEDgar on October 01, 2015, 06:33:39 PM

Quote from: VeritasSapere on October 01, 2015, 06:12:07 PM

Quote from: poeEDgar on October 01, 2015, 06:02:56 PM

Quote from: VeritasSapere on October 01, 2015, 02:00:20 PM

This is a shameful display of censorship and close mindedness of the Core developers. This just further proves that we need alternative implementations of Bitcoin so that important discussions and issues are not just censored and ignored.

To quote Mike Hearn from this discussion: i'm sorry but you cannot have a situation where there is only one implementation, where that implementation has one guy making the decisions, and then expect people to not engage in argument and debate about decisions being made or not made.

I agree with Mike Hearn on this point and he should not have been banned for saying this. It is completely unjustified and undeserved to ban him for saying this. Having one person deciding on changes within Bitcoin and having five more people with veto power over the development is an untenable position for Bitcoin especially if we want Bitcoin to be truly decentralized. Multiple competing implementations of Bitcoin is the solution to the political problems we are currently experiencing.

LOL, months later, you are still spewing this crap all over my screen.

He was banned (and likely temporarily) because, as usual, he is polluting the technical forum with his inane, political badgering. Wasting everyone's time and energy, constantly pushing ideas that no devs want a part of and endlessly crying that the reason for this is the governance structure -- it's not. It's because he is a cancer, and his ideas and code are horrible. The vast majority of miners, users, devs understand this; that you apparently do not is of little concern to anyone.

Go ahead and run your alternative implementation. Go ahead and fork off another. No one is stopping anyone from forking the code. Understand that the vast majority of miners, users and devs will not touch or run shoddy code backed by horrible ideas. That is just a practical reality. It has nothing to do with this perceived "censorship" or "OMG there is only one implementation". It's simple: produce an alternative client that is worth running and developing and people will do so. XT was not that. At all. Give it up.

Just saying that his arguments have no merit because he is a cancer is not a valid argument. It is actually a problem that the developers do not want to defend themselves on political grounds. Since having one person in charge with five other people with veto power over the development of Bitcoin when there is only one main implementation is tantamount to centralization of power and is indefensible in terms of decentralization. I am glad that you can agree with me that we need more implementations of Bitcoin, so far we only have one alternative implementation to Bitcoin Core so to support that because we disagree with Core is most definitely defensible. We should all be united in our opposition of what is happening in Core and we need to realize the danger and problems that this presents.

His ideas have been widely rejected on technical grounds. His blacklisting/redlisting ideas have also been widely rejected on political grounds. That he is a cancer is not the argument; it's the conclusion. I'm not going to dig through months/years of mailing list discussion because you don't have a grasp of history.

Prove this statement: "Centralization of bitcoin development causes centralization of the bitcoin protocol." Because I only care about the latter. This is a constant red herring. That bitcoin is a decentralized protocol doesn't state anything about its governance structure. The development process has always been centralized, and I don't view that as a problem per se. Please state exactly why it is. If you think the answer is "because BIP101 won't ever be implemented" you would be wrong. Miners' reaction to BIP100 (which was not an implementable code) and the undeniable rejection of miners/users to XT should be enough evidence that it never would have been implemented. It seems that you just want to fight reality as hard as you can.

I'm not united in opposition of "what is happening in Core". Core developers have done incredible work for bitcoin, and I don't see any issues, really. Prove that centralization of development is detrimental. (Do you have any idea how centralized bitcoin development was in 2008-2009?)

The only issue is this false sense of urgency that says we need to increase the block size limit yesterday. Well, blocks don't look full to me, so let's not rush into implementing fixes that lack technical merit. (I have, in the past, stated many reasons why BIP101 lacked technical merit and never received adequate retorts from you on those points. You always return to "governance issues" that don't address the point that we lack an alternative implementation that warrants being run on technical merit.)

Of course, being an "alternative" is not, on its face, a reason to run a client. That's insane.

Here -- I am releasing "Bitcoin 2.0" and raising the total coin supply to 84 million, while quadrupling the current block reward. Want to run my code? It's an alternative implementation! We need alternative implementations!

You realize that's what happened, right? An alternative client was released and it was overwhelmingly rejected on both technical and philosophical grounds? Okay, well let's move on then.

That Mike Hearn is a cancer can not possibly be the conclusion of any rational argument.

If development is centralized then how do we stop the developers from adding centralization to the protocol level? The truth is development is open and anyone can develop an alternative client, this possibility has always existed and is an important aspect of Bitcoin governance. To answer your question directly, I would consider development centralization to become an issue if the blocksize is not increased within a reasonable time frame. I think that this has already happened, I would be content with any increase in the blocksize from Core or even just a plan or statement of the intend to increase the blocksize, yet we have not had any of these things come from Core.

I am aware of how centralized development has been during the early days of Bitcoin, however I think as Bitcoin matures development should become more decentralized, this is off political necessity. Gavin Andresen himself gave up control of Bitcoin Core and handed it over to some of the other Core developers, people should keep this in mind when they call him a tyrant or dictator, he did give up his power over the code base after all. Which is now being used to block Gavin from increasing the blocksize today.

We have indeed discussed the merit of BIP101, I felt like you failed to respond to my political arguments which I presume you still do not acknowledge.

I would not support a client that increases the supply of Bitcoin. I would support a client that increases the blocksize, by implementing BIP101. These are two very different things, it is an inaccurate comparison.

I do not think that we should wait before the blocks are full before we do a hard fork to increase the blocksize, doing a hard fork at short notice could cause many problems. If we waited to long to increase the blocksize and there was a spike in adoption transactions could become unreliable and much more expensive, this would not be good for Bitcoin. I refuse to just "trust" that this group of five people can all agree with each other before these problems occur. I have even acknowledged some of your technical criticisms and I would support a more conservative blocksize increase as soon at it is implemented in another client whether it be Core or another alternative implementation.

I disagree that BIP101 has been overwhelmingly rejected on both technical and philosophical grounds. It is however irrelevant even if it was, our beliefs should not be based on what the majority believes, it should be based on the result of our own independent reasoning.