Quote from: The Pharmacist on August 09, 2022, 06:09:58 AM

I'm not familiar with tornado cash whatsoever, and I'm pretty ignorant about smart contracts too, but I did take a look at the article and I think what needs to happen is for this action to be challenged via the legal system, lest it set a precedent that might put into motion all of those github removals and negative actions against bitcoin that you suggested could happen.

I am not a lawyer myself but haven't we already had such a precedent[1] where the US Government tried to prohibit the distribution of open-source code and where the court ruled out that code is speech and therefore protected by the First Amendment? In this case, the US Government also attempts to censor free speech expressed via computer language, thereby violating the said amendment.

https://www.eff.org/ru/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-established-code-speech

Quote from: pooya87 on August 09, 2022, 06:59:51 AM

And yet CoinJoin projects on GitHub like Wasabi are never shut down. Hmmm. LOL.

I doubt that they will start sanctioning those "privacy-oriented" projects that voluntarily agreed to infringe on the privacy rights of users. It won't be long before such projects providing "compliant" CoinJoins voluntarily agree to inject "harmless" backdoors in their software to keep the flow of revenue intact.

Quote from: pooya87 on August 09, 2022, 06:59:51 AM

There was a topic about this a while ago when GitHub restricted a lot of accounts:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5169284.0

achow101 response in the thread you mentioned basically answers my question regarding decentralization of development, but I find it too pessimistic and can't agree it is not possible. If bitcoin cannot be developed or updated in a decentralized manner, it risks being overtaken by centralized decision-makers who will dictate the course bitcoin should follow.

Quote from: NeuroticFish on August 09, 2022, 07:16:53 AM

I don't think so. Bitcoin is not illegal and its current direction is getting adopted by large institutions. They can easily lobby against this kind of measures if it's the case.

Honestly, I don't think institutional investors are that interested in bitcoin being censorship-resistant or private, they rather value the "store-of-wealth" aspect of bitcoin that allows them sort of hedge against money printing. If some platforms or persons get banned for doing bitcoin, it is not a big deal as long as bitcoin works and produces new blocks.

Quote from: NeuroticFish on August 09, 2022, 07:16:53 AM

In theory anyone can host a system similar to Github on his computer, just if it's not publicly visible there may come trust issues.
And obviously all the bigger systems like this are centralized. The most known is GitLab, but a list would be here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/24256558

Self-hosting of repositories or spinning up a server is a solution to the problem of censorship, but most people won't bother running their own servers.

Quote from: NotATether on August 09, 2022, 08:35:07 AM

No, you host your own Git server (Gitea). That is what I and many others did when Hollywood came knocking on youtube-dl's door.

As far as Bitcoin the currency is concerned, it's not a mixer or a "laundromat", so it has nothing to fear. Even in a hypothetical situation, we can fight back, print shirts and all kinds of stuff with Bitcoin Core source code on it, just like the 90's cypherpunks fought back for PGP.

For ordinary individuals like myself who are not developers, self-hosting of a Git server is more of an overkill. I have been thinking about writing a simple bash script that would make automatic backups of the bitcoin repository and put them on an external hard drive. This way, I would ensure that I can access the code regardless of what the US Government thinks about bitcoin.