[Bitcoin-segwit2x] September/October SegWit2x Status Update

[John Newbery]

> 7. I've been paying close attention to the Bitcoin Core 0.15.x rollout.
> Based on instability and bugs that upstream Bitcoin Core project is seeing
> - ie. Core's bugs not ours - segwit2x will stay on Bitcoin Core 0.14.x
> through the November fork.  This is the most stable path for users, based
> on upstream Bitcoin Core instability.
>
> In short we -do not- feel that Bitcoin Core bugs and instability will
> impact our project in the short term, because this is not yet in a
segwit2x
> production release on a production branch.

Jeff,

Apologies for reviving an old thread. I replied to your email last week,
but it appears to be stuck in the moderation queue. This is some of what I
wrote:

> Can you point specifically to the regressions from 0.14 -> 0.15 that are
preventing you from rebasing? As far as I'm aware, 0.15.0.1 is the most
robust version of Bitcoin Core available and fixes critical attack vectors.
>
> If you're aware of something that the Bitcoin Core project isn't, can you
share it with us? There are over 4,000 users currently running 0.15 and
0.15.0.1, so it's really important that we make sure those people are
protected. I'm not very interested in your btc1 project, but I do care
deeply about making sure that Bitcoin Core users are safe.
>
> If you think you've discovered a zero-day flaw with 0.15 that isn't in
0.14, can you at least confirm that you've discreetly made the project
maintainers aware of it?
>
> ...

I've now seen subsequent tweets from you such as "I am watching the stream
of bug reports and fixes in bitcoin/bitcoin.  Other people keep raising
issues." that clarify that you're talking about issues, not bugs.

You've worked in software long enough to know this, but for readers who
don't, there's a very big difference between issues and bugs. An issue is
any problem that a user has with the software, where the root cause could
be one of many things, such as bad or missing documentation, missing
functionality, hardware problems, network problems, a bug, etc. . A bug is
an fault in the conception, design or implementation of the software.

I urge you to be a bit more careful with your language in future, for a
couple of reasons:

First, the practical. As far as I'm aware, v0.15.0.1 is the most robust and
stable version of Bitcoin Core. If users read your email and come to the
conclusion that they shouldn't upgrade from v0.14, they leave themselves
open to all the bugs and problems that we've fixed in v0.15. That would be
a very bad outcome for those users.

Second, the social. v0.15 was the result of many thousands of hours of
volunteer time designing, developing, testing and reviewing new features
and bug fixes, as well as many thousands of hours of regression testing. To
casually throw around the insinuation that it's buggy and unstable is an
insult to all of those contributors.

It's not a huge deal. We all make mistakes with our words sometimes, but I
do hope you try to be a bit more careful in future.

Regards,
John
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