[bitcoin-dev] BIP Process: Status, comments, and copyright licenses

[Luke Dashjr]

On Tuesday, February 02, 2016 11:28:40 PM Dave Scotese wrote:
> How about "defining" (rules, code, etc.) Such code and rules define what
> bitcoin is.  It does require consensus and it ends up being a concord, but
> all that can come after the fact (just as it did after bitcoin was first
> released to the public).

The difficulty is that this BIP needs to refer to three different context of 
consensus:

1. Consensus (stated) among developers for changes in the BIP Process.
2. Economic consensus (potential and stated) to veto a soft-fork by an
   intended "firing" of the set of miners if they choose to enforce it.
3. (Actual) consensus in economic adoption of changed rules, to determine the
   success of a hard-fork (after the fact).
4. The set of rules currently established as (defining) Bitcoin, enforced by
   an (actual) consensus of economically-relevant nodes.

Context 3 can be disambiguated with "adoption consensus", and context 4 with 
"consensus rules" and/or "consensus protocol", but I don't see a clear 
solution that covers all four contexts, and even sharing the word "consensus" 
for them may be confusing.

In addition, usage of the word "consensus" for context 4 has proven confusing 
to users. For example, recently users misinterpreted the "Consensus" label 
used in context 4 as implying that the idea itself had in fact achieved 
consensus among some group of decision-makers (similar to context 1, but not 
necessarily the group being "developers").

I don't know a good way to make this completely clear, so suggestions are more 
than welcome.

Luke