David A. Harding [ARCHIVE] on Nostr: 📅 Original date posted:2023-05-07 🗒️ Summary of this message: The concern is ...
📅 Original date posted:2023-05-07
🗒️ Summary of this message: The concern is that current maintainers will decide which proposed new maintainers to add and which to block, but this is how many organizations are run. The questions to ask are whether the current maintainers are capable of moving Bitcoin Core in the right direction and what can be done if they are not. However, this matter should not have been posted to this mailing list.
📝 Original message:On 2023-05-06 21:03, Michael Folkson via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> Essentially my concern is going forward current maintainers will
> decide which proposed new maintainers to add and which to block.
This is how a large percentage of organizations are run. The current
members of a board or other governance group choose who will become a
new board member.
One alternative to self-perpetuating governance is membership voting,
but building and maintaining democratic institutions is hard and not a
good fit for many types of endeavors---the building of highly technical
software being one of those cases IMO.
I think the questions we want to ask is whether the current set of
maintainers is capable of moving Bitcoin Core in the direction we want
and what we can do about it if we conclude that they are ill-suited (or
malicious). For the first question, I think that's something everyone
needs to answer for themselves, as we may each have different visions
for the future of the project. That said, I note that several
initiatives championed by the current maintainers in the IRC meeting you
mention received overwhelmingly positive support from a significant
number of current contributors, which seems like a healthy sign to me.
For the second question, I think AJ Towns already answered that quite
well (though he was talking about a different project):
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-April/021578.html
Finally, I don't think this matter warranted a post to this mailing
list. Discussion about internal project decisions, such as who should
have merge access and what maintainers should communicate in PRs, belong
in communication channels dedicated to that project.
-Dave
🗒️ Summary of this message: The concern is that current maintainers will decide which proposed new maintainers to add and which to block, but this is how many organizations are run. The questions to ask are whether the current maintainers are capable of moving Bitcoin Core in the right direction and what can be done if they are not. However, this matter should not have been posted to this mailing list.
📝 Original message:On 2023-05-06 21:03, Michael Folkson via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> Essentially my concern is going forward current maintainers will
> decide which proposed new maintainers to add and which to block.
This is how a large percentage of organizations are run. The current
members of a board or other governance group choose who will become a
new board member.
One alternative to self-perpetuating governance is membership voting,
but building and maintaining democratic institutions is hard and not a
good fit for many types of endeavors---the building of highly technical
software being one of those cases IMO.
I think the questions we want to ask is whether the current set of
maintainers is capable of moving Bitcoin Core in the direction we want
and what we can do about it if we conclude that they are ill-suited (or
malicious). For the first question, I think that's something everyone
needs to answer for themselves, as we may each have different visions
for the future of the project. That said, I note that several
initiatives championed by the current maintainers in the IRC meeting you
mention received overwhelmingly positive support from a significant
number of current contributors, which seems like a healthy sign to me.
For the second question, I think AJ Towns already answered that quite
well (though he was talking about a different project):
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-April/021578.html
Finally, I don't think this matter warranted a post to this mailing
list. Discussion about internal project decisions, such as who should
have merge access and what maintainers should communicate in PRs, belong
in communication channels dedicated to that project.
-Dave