I am trusting that Tycho will wait for us to all calm down, eventually review this thread, determine that the consensus is clearly with Gavin, and run with it.
Looks like I have to remind one of my points:
- I don't think that there is any chance of BIP17 winning because it's not supported by any major force besides Eligius (sorry, luke)
I like the fact that it doesn't uses magic cases and serialized form, but it may have drawbacks too. Also, I expect most people to be disappointed if I choose BIP17.
So I'll repeat:
I don't think that there is any serious competition between BIP16 and BIP17. The only question is WHEN BIP16 will be adopted (if no other proposals appear soon).
I would immediately support any plain multisig scheme or sane long-address multisig TX proposal as possible first-stage on our way to P2SH to allow people play with it and get more time for preparing P2SH deployment.