It looks like there is yet another ongoing debate between Bitcoin Core and BU supporters. The Bitcoin Unlimited developers released a client update yet they released the code from a private repository. This caused a lot of speculation as to how “incompetent” the Bitcoin Unlimited developers are. As it turns out, the team had a good reason for this approach and the binaries have been made open source a few hours ago.
Bitcoin Unlimited Client Update Controversy
It has to be said, the way these latest Bitcoin Unlimited binaries were distributed at first was rather unusual. Using a private GitHub repository to spread this update is frowned upon, even though it turned out there was a lot of panic and finger pointing for nothing. Some people were concerned about this method of distribution, and it did not take long until mudslinging occurred.
The reason why the Bitcoin Unlimited developers took this measure is to avoid another attack against the BU network. When the previous “exploit” was made public, someone used to take a few hundred Unlimited nodes offline in quick succession. Even though it remains unclear who was behind the attack, the BU developers wanted to avoid another attack. On paper, that makes a lot of sense from their point of view, especially when considering this new bug affected nodes as well.
The binaries released from the private repository have been merged into the public repository. The team wanted to make sure critical network nodes upgraded first and foremost. At the time the binaries were released, this approach seemed to be the best course of action. While this way of handling things can be considered controversial, there is very little else that could have been done to address this “issue” in a timely manner.
Rest assured this situation will continue to be a source of substantial debate and criticism. It is good to see the BU developers address bugs in a timely manner, although some people will point out Unlimited is a bug-laden branch of development. Close-sourcing a patch is a very disturbing development, to say the least, yet things turned out to be alright in the end.
Some Bitcoin Core supporters are claiming Bitcoin unlimited has become a “closed source’ development project. That is rather overstating things, albeit the sentiment is understandable. Using a private repository may not have been the best idea, but the developers are not planning to continue along this path for every single update. It is unfortunate this binary release was handled this way, yet what is done, is done.
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