[Lightning-dev] Removing lnd's source code from the Lightning specs repository

[Fabrice Drouin]

On Tue, 12 Oct 2021 at 21:57, Olaoluwa Osuntokun <laolu32 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Also note that lnd has _never_ referred to itself as the "reference"
> implementation.  A few years ago some other implementations adopted that
> title themselves, but have since adopted softer language.

I don't remember that but if you're referring to c-lightning it was
the first lightning implementation, and the only one for a while, so
in a way it was a "reference" at the time ?
Or it could have been a reference to their policy of "implementing the
spec, all the spec and nothing but the spec"  ?

> I think it's worth briefly revisiting a bit of history here w.r.t the github
> org in question. In the beginning, the lightningnetwork github org was
> created by Joseph, and the lightningnetwork/paper repo was added, the
> manuscript that kicked off this entire thing. Later lightningnetwork/lnd was
> created where we started to work on an initial implementation (before the
> BOLTs in their current form existed), and we were added as owners.
> Eventually we (devs of current impls) all met up in Milan and decided to
> converge on a single specification, thus we added the BOLTs to the same
> repo, despite it being used for lnd and knowingly so.

Yes, work on c-lightning then eclair then lnd all began a long time
before the BOLTs process was implemented, and we all set up repos,
accounts...
I agree that we all inherited things  from the "pre-BOLTS" era and
changing them will create some friction but I still believe it should
be done. You also mentioned potential admin rights issues on the
current specs repos which would be solved by moving them to a new
clean repo.

> As it seems the primary grievance here is collocating an implementation of
> Lightning along with the _specification_ of the protocol, and given that the
> spec was added last, how about we move the spec to an independent repo owned
> by the community? I currently have github.com/lightning, and would be happy
> to donate it to the community, or we could create a new org like
> "lightning-specs" or something similar.

Sounds great! github.com/lightning is nice (and I like Damian's idea
of using github.com/lightning/bolts) and seems to please everyone so
it looks that we have a plan!

Fabrice