“Mauro, SHUT THE FUCK UP!It’s a bug alright – in the kernel. How long have you been a maintainer? And you *still* haven’t learnt the first rule of kernel maintenance?If a change results in user programs breaking, it’s a bug in the kernel. We never EVER blame the user programs. How hard can this be to Understand?” -Linus Torvalds
Don’t break userspace. That is Linus Torvald’s golden rule for growth of the Linux kernel. For these of you studying this who are usually not aware of the character of Linux, or working programs generally, the kernel is the center and soul of an working system. The kernel is what really manages the {hardware}, transferring bits round between storage and RAM, between the RAM and the CPU as issues are computed, and all the little gadgets and items of the particular laptop that must be managed on the {hardware} stage.
Each utility or program written for an working system has to work together with the kernel. Whenever you obtain Photoshop, or Telegram, every thing that program is doing boils right down to basically calling the kernel. “Hey kernel, take what I just typed and process it and send it over a network connection to the server.” “Hey kernel, take the color shift I made to this pitch, take it out of RAM and send it to the CPU to modify it, then put it back in RAM.”
When the kernel is modified, in a considerably related vogue to Bitcoin, the chief aim of builders is to make sure that current functions that assume a particular method to work together with the kernel don’t break due to a change to the kernel. Sounds very acquainted to Bitcoin and the need to take care of backwards compatibility for community consensus upgrades doesn’t it?
“Seriously. How hard is this rule to understand? We particularly don’t break user space with TOTAL CRAP. I’m angry, because your whole email was so _horribly_ wrong, and the patch that broke things was so obviously crap. The whole patch is incredibly broken shit. It adds an insane error code (ENOENT), and then because it’s so insane, it adds a few places to fix it up (“ret == -ENOENT ? -EINVAL : ret”).
The fact that you then try to make *excuses* for breaking user space, and blaming some external program that *used* to work, is just shameful. It’s not how we work.Fix your f*cking “compliance tool”, because it is obviously broken. And fix your approach to kernel programming.” -Linus Torvalds
Linux is among the most vital, if not an important, open supply mission in your complete world. Android runs on Linux, half of the backend infrastructure (if not far more) runs on Linux. Embedded programs controlling every kind of computerized issues within the background of your life you wouldn’t even think about run on Linux. The world actually runs on Linux. It may not have taken over the desktop as many autistic Linux customers needed to see occur, nevertheless it quietly ate nearly every thing else within the background with out anybody noticing.
All of those functions and packages individuals use in the midst of their every day lives rely on the idea that Linux kernel builders won’t break backwards compatibility in new variations of the kernel to permit their functions to proceed functioning. In any other case, something working functions should proceed utilizing older variations of the kernel or tackle the burden of altering their functions to work together with a breaking change within the kernel.
Bitcoin’s most certainly path to success is a really related street, merely changing into a platform that monetary functions and instruments are constructed on prime of in such a means that most individuals utilizing them received’t even understand or think about that “Bitcoin ate the world.” In an analogous vein to Linux, that golden rule of “Don’t break userspace” applies tenfold. The issue is the character of Bitcoin as a distributed consensus system, quite than a single native kernel working on one individual’s machine, wildly adjustments what “breaking userspace” means.
It’s not simply builders that may break userspace, customers themselves can break userspace. Your entire final 12 months of Ordinals, Inscriptions, and BRC-20 tokens ought to definitively display that. This presents a really critical quandary when wanting on the mantra of “Don’t break userspace” from the viewpoint of builders. As a lot as many Bitcoiners on this house don’t like Ordinals, and are upset that their very own use circumstances are being disrupted by the community visitors Ordinals customers are creating, each teams are customers.
So how do builders confront this drawback? One group of customers is breaking userspace for an additional group of customers. To enact a change that stops using Ordinals or Inscriptions explicitly violates the mandates of don’t break userspace. I’m certain individuals wish to say “Taproot broke userspace!” in response to this dilemma, nevertheless it didn’t. Taproot activation, and the allowance for witness knowledge to be as massive as your complete blocksize, didn’t break any pre-existing functions or makes use of constructed on prime of Bitcoin. All it did was open the door for brand new functions and use circumstances.
So what will we do right here? To try to filter, or break by a consensus change, individuals making Inscriptions or buying and selling Ordinals is to essentially violate the maxim of “don’t break userspace.” To do nothing permits one class of customers to interrupt the userspace of one other class of customers. There’s essentially no answer to this drawback besides to violate the golden rule, or to implement performance that permits the category of customers’ whose userspace is damaged now to adapt to the brand new realities of the community and preserve a viable model of their functions and use circumstances.
Not breaking the userspace of Bitcoin is of essential significance for its continued success and performance, however it isn’t so simple as “don’t change anything.” Dynamic adjustments in person conduct, that require no change to the precise protocol itself, can have the identical impact on the finish of the day as a breaking change to the protocol. Are builders supposed to select and select which functions’ userspace is damaged to take care of that of one other utility? I might say no, and go additional to say that anybody advocating for such conduct from builders is demanding them to behave irresponsibly and in a means that harms customers of the system. So what’s the reply right here?
There isn’t any reply besides to push ahead and proceed including enhancements to the protocol that permit functions being damaged by the conduct of sure customers to perform within the presence of emergent adjustments in customers’ conduct. In any other case, you might be asking builders to throw out the golden rule and successfully play kingmakers with regard to what use circumstances are viable to construct on prime of Bitcoin.
If we go down that street, then what are we really doing right here? I can’t inform you what we’re doing at that time, however I can inform you it’s not constructing a distributed and impartial system anymore.
