Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2013 19:38:25 +0100
From: Pieter Wuille <pieter.wuille@gmail.com>
To: Mark Friedenbach <mark@monetize.io>
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Cc: "bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net"
	<bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] 0.8.1 ideas
Precedence: list

On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 11:27:13AM -0700, Mark Friedenbach wrote:
> I know there's people here who will jump in saying that the bitcoin
> protocol is the behavior of the Satoshi client, period. But which Satoshi
> client? 0.7 or 0.8?

The protocol is whatever the network enforces - and that is some mix of versions of the
reference client right now, but doesn't need to remain that way.

I would very much like to have a text book of rules that is authorative, and every client
that follows it would be correct. Unfortunately, that is not how a consensus system works.
All (full) clients validate all rules, and all must independently come to the same
solution. Consensus is of utmost importance, more than some theoretical "correctness".
If we'd have a specification document, and it was discovered that a lot of
nodes on the network were doing something different than the document, those nodes would
be buggy, but it would be the specification that is wrong.

That is what happened: 0.7 and before had a bug, but 0.8 was wrong for not following the
rules of the network (which I hate to say, as I'm responsible for many changes in 0.8).

As said in another thread, the problem in the old versions needs fixing (this would even
be the case if no 0.8 existed at all, and no fork risk existed at all). But let's please
do it in a way we can all agree about, in a controlled fashion.

-- 
Pieter