The fallout ended up extending beyond the fork itself. Earlier this week, Dashjr was removed as a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal editor following a vote by other Bitcoin developers, with the motion citing his role in BIP-110 and raising conflict-of-interest concerns over his use of editorial privileges. Dashjr was one of the longest serving BIP editors.
Despite opposing BIP-110, Zucco criticized Dashjr's removal, saying it was "a wrong move at the wrong time."
"It doesn't make a material change or a relevant one, and it seems like retribution," Zucco said. "Retribution for being wrong."
He said the timing would likely only fuel claims among BIP-110 supporters that Bitcoin development had become centralized.
"There was no need to do that," Zucco added. "It just gives more fuel to the fire of conspiracy theories about this kind of centralization capture of Bitcoin."
Agreed, it's just added point/clarification on top of Giacomo's.
It again seems like a change done in Core space that does not seem to be having material immediate effect and it's done in an unfortunate time, which then has predictable outcome of lost of some trust, causing more infighting, causing more drama. In this case the bip110ers are busy mea-culping, so it probably won't have such notability, but folks like @giacomozucco will be referencing it for the years to come.
My general framework here (not talking directly about @Murch) is that when a negative reaction/outcome was generally predictable from your action, then you bare responsibility for the negative outcome. Such situation are then a great source of learning and root causing to improve prediction and actions next time.
The best would have been if Luke had resigned any time after stopping to perform the BIP Editor work. I had publicly asked for his resignation after him trying to assign a BIP number on Twitter for a BIP that hadn’t even been sent to the mailing list.
If we had removed Luke in the past few months, people like Giacomo would have said it’s retaliation for championing BIP110 or for calling us pedos all the same.
After not doing anything for years, all the crap he pulled, I don’t see how it would have been tenable to keep Luke on after he additionally announced his departure from Bitcoin development.
So, I’d be curious to hear what would have been a better time to remove Luke. What additional events would you have waited for, or which criteria would you have used?
The BIP repo is centralized. I don't see how it could be any other way -- unless they used some sort of complicated voting mechanism to determine what makes it into the repo, which would probably just be a mess.
The same is true for the Core repo and the Knots repo and the btcd repo and the libbitcoin repo. These projects all have quite a bit of centralization, I guess because of the convenience.
However, I don't think the action against Luke is a sign of increased centralization.
E.g., when the Taproot authors wanted to amend their BIP to propose a deployment mechanism, he obstructed the update even after all three authors had signed off on it, because he favored a different deployment mechanism. He had also done next to no BIP Editor work in five years. If you don’t do the work, you don’t need the privileges necessary to do the work.
A likely consequence of Luke getting kicked out will be the creation of a competitor to the central BIP repo. Having two repos rather than one is less centralized.
100% politics, regardless of which hat you toss your credits into
BIPs are politics, although political "centralization" is an oversimplification when force would accomplish nothing by threatening Murch over having deprived Luke of his privilege... a soldier who declares "the king is dead; long live the king" has neither committed regicide nor crowned the successor.
a repo's always got maintainers, that part was never the complaint. what stinks is the timing. longest serving editor gets pulled days after his fork fails, cited for 'disputes', and we're meant to read that as clean process. six months ago it's routine, today it reads as retribution. zucco said wrong move at the wrong time and he's right, it hands the fork crowd their whole centralization story for free
Giacomo, a voice of reason again
It's of note that Giacomo was predicting for many months that Luke will be removed as BIP editor.
It’s not that surprising of a prediction, given that Luke has been not doing the work of a BIP Editor in over five years.
Agreed, it's just added point/clarification on top of Giacomo's.
It again seems like a change done in Core space that does not seem to be having material immediate effect and it's done in an unfortunate time, which then has predictable outcome of lost of some trust, causing more infighting, causing more drama. In this case the bip110ers are busy mea-culping, so it probably won't have such notability, but folks like @giacomozucco will be referencing it for the years to come.
My general framework here (not talking directly about @Murch) is that when a negative reaction/outcome was generally predictable from your action, then you bare responsibility for the negative outcome. Such situation are then a great source of learning and root causing to improve prediction and actions next time.
The best would have been if Luke had resigned any time after stopping to perform the BIP Editor work. I had publicly asked for his resignation after him trying to assign a BIP number on Twitter for a BIP that hadn’t even been sent to the mailing list.
If we had removed Luke in the past few months, people like Giacomo would have said it’s retaliation for championing BIP110 or for calling us pedos all the same.
After not doing anything for years, all the crap he pulled, I don’t see how it would have been tenable to keep Luke on after he additionally announced his departure from Bitcoin development.
https://x.com/LukeDashjr/status/2086645671914840081
So, I’d be curious to hear what would have been a better time to remove Luke. What additional events would you have waited for, or which criteria would you have used?
2-3 months from now. The half-life of attention is now probably like two weeks. So I'd wait for the concentration to decay to less than 5%.
https://twiiit.com/LukeDashjr/status/2086645671914840081
It is but it’s expected.
The BIP repo is centralized. I don't see how it could be any other way -- unless they used some sort of complicated voting mechanism to determine what makes it into the repo, which would probably just be a mess.
The same is true for the Core repo and the Knots repo and the btcd repo and the libbitcoin repo. These projects all have quite a bit of centralization, I guess because of the convenience.
However, I don't think the action against Luke is a sign of increased centralization.
I don’t know anything about Luke as a BIP editor. Has he ever fucked up?
E.g., when the Taproot authors wanted to amend their BIP to propose a deployment mechanism, he obstructed the update even after all three authors had signed off on it, because he favored a different deployment mechanism. He had also done next to no BIP Editor work in five years. If you don’t do the work, you don’t need the privileges necessary to do the work.
I listed some other grievances in my second email on the mailing list thread: https://groups.google.com/g/bitcoindev/c/knbv3MFwlvU
Let's say your wife went on rampant fucking every dude around and also went against your family.
Do you still keep her in your house?
I thought Bitcoin didn’t have a home, a husband, or a family!
Bitcoin doesn't, but the institution that exists for BIP administration does.
isn't it "we"?
A likely consequence of Luke getting kicked out will be the creation of a competitor to the central BIP repo. Having two repos rather than one is less centralized.
Could you elaborate on that? I didn’t get it.
Luke's gonna start LBIPS: Luke's Bitcoin Improvement Proposals.
all Luke does is always resolves around him.
there's a "why do we have a global CRDT notary network anyway" joke here, somewhere
too bad
postingcommenting is so cheap that nobody will read the result.But that’s gonna be on the forkcoin, it has nothing to do with Bitcoin anymore. right?
I'm not going to bet on Luke leaving...
Community started their own repo of Bitcoin Improvement Proposals: https://github.com/GregTonoski/bips
He's calling Bitcoin "Bpedo" now. Why would we want to let him stay as an editor if that's his opinion?
Word
100% politics, regardless of which hat you toss your credits into
BIPs are politics, although political "centralization" is an oversimplification when force would accomplish nothing by threatening Murch over having deprived Luke of his privilege... a soldier who declares "the king is dead; long live the king" has neither committed regicide nor crowned the successor.
they've been too kind for such an asshole
but better late than never
Isn’t it a pretty obvious conflict of interest for him to have editor permissions for his rival product?
Yes, very obviously so in my opinion.
Is bitcoin a product?
Sure, but I meant rival node implementations
Do you mean a rival blockchain?
No, but that too
Looks like he's moved on to other things.
totally agree
a repo's always got maintainers, that part was never the complaint. what stinks is the timing. longest serving editor gets pulled days after his fork fails, cited for 'disputes', and we're meant to read that as clean process. six months ago it's routine, today it reads as retribution. zucco said wrong move at the wrong time and he's right, it hands the fork crowd their whole centralization story for free