Counterparty Developer Meeting (06-22-2018)

On the Counterparty Discord, on June 22nd, 2018, there was an open meeting for anyone interested in Counterparty development. The meeting was recorded and the conversation transcribed. Please review the discussion below and feel free to comment on this thread about the topics discussed.

Next meeting:
TBD

Please, cast your vote on date & time here:

Our last meeting was June 8th, 2018:
https://forums.counterparty.io/t/counterparty-developer-meeting-06-08-2018

High-Level: (Feel free to suggest alternative summaries below)
In response to an ultimatum issued as a result of the last meeting, a core team member with commit access attended this meeting, a long standing goal of the previous three meetings. It was agreeable to most people on the call that commit access would be extended to two new developers, possibly from the IndieSquare and FLDC teams. And that, in the short term, the priority and focus of development should be on supporting the latest version of Bitcoin Core.

Archive.org:
Audio Recording: https://archive.org/details/counterparty-developer-meeting-06-22-2018
Transcription: Counterparty Developer Meeting Transcript (06-22-2018) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The audio and transcription of this meeting is released into the Public Domain.

Transcription:

This audio is transcribed by a professional, but not someone who knows Counterparty or the people on the call, so the audio will ALWAYS be the best source for an accurate record of the meeting.

counterparty-developer-meeting-06-22-2018

Run Time: 1:20:29

Speaker: 00:00:01 I’m good waiting a little longer. You can always record it now.

NeedMoney: 00:00:07 I can wait a little longer, as well. If we can wait for John Dietkas, I think that he’s one of the people who’s integral to the success of this dev meeting.

Chris: 00:00:18 Is John definitely joining? Do we know that, or are we just waiting to see if he does?

Speaker: 00:00:25 Last I heard, he was going to join. I’m not sure if you want to wait or go ahead and roll the meeting.

NeedMoney: 00:00:30 I think we should give it a chance…a little.

Speaker: 00:00:34 Yeah, I agree. I’m good with waiting. Is anybody on a super big time crunch right now?

Speaker: 00:00:40 Not. me.

Speaker: 00:00:40 No.

Speaker: 00:00:41 No.

Speaker: 00:00:42 Good. I’m good waiting. I can just keep doing emails while I wait.

Speaker: 00:00:47 So, just out of curiosity, what’s the big issue of having John, specifically, here…just because he’s the person with Repo access?

NeedMoney: 00:00:56 Yes.

Speaker: 00:00:56 What questions need to be answered by him that can’t be answered by other people here?

NeedMoney: 00:01:02 Right now, I believe that one of the primary issues we’re facing is that there is an impasse between the people who have submitted some pull requests that are non-consensus. So, for example, the documentation on the Repo has incorrect RPCs and engine passwords. I’ve corrected that, and it sat there for months, and I’ve poked people a couple times and it hasn’t gotten dealt with. This general maintenance stuff – if the people who currently have Repo access do not have the time or the inclination to review it, it needs to be handed to somebody who does, at least in the interim, so that this stuff can get fixed, because I don’t think that this is an acceptable state of affairs.

Speaker: 00:01:46 If you check the Repo, there’s actually been pull requests that have been open for a number of years. I’m not saying this is an ideal state of things, but I do think that we give up Repo access to people who…

Speaker: 00:01:57 No, I’m not saying give up Repo access, I’m saying… an I finish real quick? I’m saying that we need to add people to Repo access who haven’t necessarily proven with commits, and shown that they understand the full gravity of having commit access. I’m not sure that I’m really comfortable with adding it or adding people that don’t have the technical background.

NeedMoney: 00:02:24 I understand that position, and in the past I’ve shared your same view. However, in recent times I have seen… And I have not broached this subject in the past because I have not been able to think of a suitable person to actually do the job. However, in the past couple months, I do believe that Dan – Droplister – has shown significant initiative in attempting to push things forward and he actually has expertise in codes. If you have any particular reason why you think that he is not an acceptable person to be given Repo access, I’m all ears.

J-Dog: 00:02:59 Absolutely. Personally, I have history with Droplister, so I, personally, am not a huge fan of Droplister, but I’ll put that to the side. Droplister has shown a history of not really caring about what the consensus of Counterparty is. He’ll make Counterparty proposals and then when asked, “Hey, do you care what other people think? Do you care that this might be considered a scan or something or other,” he’s said that he doesn’t care. It seems to be what he does is goes off and rallies five, ten people behind his idea, and gets them to be very, very vocal about the idea, however, there are a large group of Counterparty people who are not, necessarily, interested in going up against Dan or Dante, or fighting about these issues, but also have the same opinion as I, that the Counterparty is best maintained by people who have the history maintaining it. The project was handed over by the founders to…

NeedMoney: 00:03:57 If I may interject – there’s no Foundation anymore.

J-Dog: 00:04:00 I didn’t say anything about the Foundation. I said the founders of the project handed over Repo access…

NeedMoney: 00:04:06 Everything that could be considered, other than the Repo, itself, but anything that could be considered a centralizing vector and Counterparty has been dissolved to the best of my knowledge.

J-Dog: 00:04:15 Okay. So getting back to your core issue – is that you were upset that the Repo is not [crosstalk - 00:04:20]

NeedMoney: 00:04:20 I’m not upset. I think that…let me see how to phrase this. Actually, a better question to ask – do you think that, if given Repo access, Droplister might show a bit more restraint in his viewpoints, or if he was actually brought into the fold, actually go in and be more willing to work with you guys as opposed to dismissing your views? His past views and his past actions have not been done in the capacity of a Repo maintainer and I feel that he might show a different degree of professionalism if he was given that kind of responsibility.

J-Dog: 00:05:02 Right, and I would agree with you there to some degree. If he wants to continue to participate in Counterparty, you do it the way that everyone else who has proven himself has, which is so submit pull requests, you wait until people that have the technical expert…

NeedMoney: 00:05:14 He’s been [crosstalk - 00:05:14] people for months, man.

J-Dog: 00:05:17 Are you finished? I understand that, and unfortunately the state of Counterparty project is that there are very few technical people who understand the Counterparty in-depth – all of the unit testing, everything that is required. It’s not just a “Hey, get Repo accessed and merge some pulled requests in.” One messed up merged pull requests can screw up all of Counterparty. Now, granted, he would have a very, very, very hard time screwing up Counterparty and taking everything down with the Repo, but nonetheless, the Repo needs to be maintained by people who have history of maintaining the Repo and shown that they have the understanding of Counterparty.

NeedMoney: 00:05:57 That seems a bit [inaudible - 00:05:57] [inaudible - 00:06:02]. One second, Droplister.

Droplister 00:06:07 I guess the meeting started through the [inaudible - 00:06:07], and maybe we could start recording it? Maybe we could do that.

J-Dog: 00:06:12 Oh, isn’t that convenient.

Speaker: 00:06:18 The recording started a while ago.

Droplister: 00:06:22 Oh, I didn’t know. I just wanted to make sure. The point of us meeting is to address the stewardship of the Repo in the current state of the Repo…

Speaker: 00:06:35 There’s feedback from somebody. Can everybody mute when you’re not talking?

Droplister: 00:06:39 So the state of the Repo right now is that there’s very little stewardship happening, which is unfortunate.

NeedMoney: 00:06:45 Correct, and I believe a couple of the people that are at this meeting have reached out to John, and other people that I have chatted with and said, “Hey, could we get Repo access?” And John and others have said they don’t have any problem with certain people,” like somebody at FoldingCoin, somebody at a proven project, that has a history, having some minimum Repo access, but as far as full Repo access, I don’t think that that’s going to be given up.

Droplsiter: 00:07:17 I’m going to try to continue addressing these issues, although you’ve kind of steam-rolled and made it very personal about me. I am not, and have not sought getting out of the Repo access…

J-Dog: 00:07:31 No, NeedMoney asked why you specifically would [crosstalk - 00:07:34]…

Needmoney: 00:07:35 Yes, I am the champion.

J-Dog: 00:07:36 …directly about you.

Droplister: 00:07:40 Okay. I would like to see more than one person with GitHub Repo access. I think that’s a very bad model – to have one person with GitHub Repo access.

J-Dog: 00:07:49 I believe there’s five different people on the Repo, and at the drop of a hat, if Counterparty went down or something, I can get on a call with Robbie and commits can be pushed, no problem – so it’s not just one.

Droplister: 00:07:59 So, I guess what I don’t agree with is that I think there’s a group of people who are actively involved in trying to further improve Counterparty, and I don’t see why it needs to be [inaudible - 00:08:18], essentially, so that people can hold Repo access as a resume builder and do no access development or Repo maintenance. Given the most basic [crosstalk - 00:08:26]…

J-Dog: 00:08:27 If you’d listen to what I said…some of these people in this meeting have reached out, for instance, from FoldingCoin and requested Repo access so that they can do…merge simple requests, merging requests, like the documentation, and such, like NeedMoney asks.

Droplister: 00:08:41 Do they [inaudible - 00:08:41]? Explain how things work, J-Dog, because you seem to be someone who’s explained someone [inaudible - 00:08:47] and are in charge.

J-Dog: 00:08:50 I’m definitely not in charge. I was just the person, who, when the founders stepped away, they gave me the websites, the wallets, and everything to run. But, I’m in no way in charge, and I personally do not work on the Counterparty protocol and have no access to the Repo. I’m just stating my opinions, and since I’ve been around in the community a long time, lots of people talk to me who don’t necessarily want to go up against the team of Dan and Dante.

Speaker: 00:09:11 So, [inaudible - 00:09:12], just to clarify something. We don’t want commit access at this point because I do agree that we need to learn the code base a little bit more. We’ve been getting our feet wet with it over the last month and getting two of our developers to actually learn the codebase, so they’ve been taking time to set out the test node – right Miguel? Yeah, I think that’s…

Speaker: 00:09:37 Jerry and Tyler are here, so…

Speaker: 00:09:40 Yeah, the test nodes have been installed and it’s just taking its time.

Speaker: 00:09:45 Okay. We’re not requesting commit access at this time. I just want to make sure I clarify that. We’re just here to help in any way we can because we want to help

Needmoney: 00:09:56 And I’m also not trying to push particularly for commit access, so much as I really want some of these basic maintenance commits to be done and [crosstalk - 00:10:06]…

Droplister: 00:10:07 I think that’s the feeling of everyone that attends these meetings. This is our fourth meeting in four months and people show up, but [crosstalk - 00:10:13] don’t show up.

J-Dog: 00:10:15 When the foundation was around, there was a developer who was working consistently, at least 40 hours a week, working on Counterparty updates and improvements. Unfortunately, he was attacked and he walked away from the project. Unfortunately, this is where we’re at right now. There’s not too many technical people that can handle merging all of that stuff.

Droplsiter: 00:10:31 [laugh]

J-Dog: 00:10:36 It’s great that John…

Droplister: 00:10:37 It’s difficult to have a conversation where I am the enemy.

J-Dog: 00:10:47 No, no, you did not shut down the Foundation.

Droplister: 00:10:50 …the bottom of the ocean that you control – no.

J-Dog: 00:10:52 Dan, let’s not make this about you and me.

Droplister: 00:10:54 You made it about me. [laugh]

J-Dog: 00:10:55 We’re not going to agree on history. You’re in Counterparty, I’m in Counterparty. We need to co-exist.

Droplister: 00:11:02 You’re being very passive-aggressive, and so when I try to defend my own reputation, when you libel me, I think you should give me some time to speak about what I’m saying.

J-Dog: 00:11:13 Go ahead.

Droplister: 00:11:12 All right. The point of this meeting was, as a result of the last meeting, which was the third meeting where no core developers or core team members showed up… It’s very disappointing to the teams who have resources, who would like to make sure Counterparty keeps working. There are serious [inaudible - 00:11:30] that need addressed, and there are minor things that need to be addressed, and none of those are being addressed. But the bad state of the Repo and the people with

Git [inaudible - 00:11:40] access are not active and are not participating in development. The Repo will just get forked like we talked about and [inaudible - 00:11:48] will continue.

J-Dog: 00:11:50 And this is part of the reason I have an issue, Dan, it’s because you say, “Oh, it’s a personal thing.” But, you’re essentially threatening, “Hey, if I don’t get control of the Repo so that I can do what I want, then I’m going to fork Counterparty, and that’s ridiculous. I’m here saying we have developers. There’s other projects here saying, “Hey, we’re learning the Counterparty base. We’re getting ready to merge pull requests in.” So, there’s absolutely no need for it to be, “We’re going to fork this thing,” Dan. It’s not a me versus you thing. Let’s focus on the project. You want to get merge requests [crosstalk - 00:12:20]…

NeedMoney: 00:12:20 I think a solid starting step would be for somebody to create a Repository, other than the Counterparty Repo that exists right now, and start merging in non-consensus changes that are actually beneficial, like, for example, the documentation fixes – so that people are actual able to use Counterparty’s API if they have Counterparty [inaudible - 00:12:40]. After presenting a Repository for long enough that has these non-consensus changes that have merged in, that’s more correct than the original one, I think that would at least a step in the right direction.

J-Dog: 00:12:57 Yes, if it’s just another Repo and there’s pull requests to the main Counterparty branch, that’s no problem, and I’ve suggested that. What it sounds like it is, “If I don’t get Repo access, I’m going to [crosstalk - 00:13:09].”

NeedMoney: 00:13:09 If that goes for long enough. If Repo [inaudible - 00:13:11]…

Droplister: 00:13:12 So, I’ve already addressed that I’m not demanding, or requesting, or even putting a [inaudible - 00:13:17], or your insistence on it…

J-Dog: 00:13:22 I’m not saying that. What I hear is you, loud and clear, Droplister, saying that unless these changes are made so that Counterparty’s Repo is maintained you’re going to fork the Repo and make changes on your own.

Droplister: 00:13:36 Yeah, I think that would be good for the ecosystem because it’s better than no maintenance, and right now we have a state of no maintenance. I don’t know why you so vehemently [inaudible - 00:13:45] the status quo of no maintenance.

J-Dog: 00:13:47 I’m not against maintenance at all. I’m curious why the creating of a new Repo is any different than what you’ve been doing. You fork Counterparty Lib and make some changes and merge it in, and request that the people who have the technical expertise to evaluate it and determine if it can get it or not, do that.

Droplsiter: 00:14:09 All Even basic things are not being happening. Like the basic of [inaudible - 00:14:12]. CounterWallet.co is linked to…for three months it’s been an open thing. There’s pull requests, they’re very basic [crosstalk - 00:14:22]…

J-Dog: 00:14:23 Seems like we’re going in circles here. There’s pull requests that are open, that are not getting maintained. I agree, we need to have some developers that will merge those simple requests in and FoldingCoin is working on understanding the Counterparty Repo and going to shortly get some kind of access so that they can start merging into…

Droplister: 00:14:41 Well, explain that process, J-Dog, because you’re saying like, “Don’t worry, it’s being handled,” in a different process or a different [inaudible - 00:14:46],” so what’s the problem?

J-Dog: 00:14:47 No, what I’m saying is what I’ve heard is that some people from FoldingCoin came to John this week, and some other people, and said, “Hey, there’s obviously a big blow up about this Repo issue that’s going to happen, so we want to be clear. We don’t have any issue with you guys maintaining the Repo. We’re not demanding Repo access, we just are here to help.” John said that’s great. Here’s how you cut your teeth, and after a little while when you guys your teeth and are understanding of it, then…perfect, you’ll get some Repo access. And that’s what I’m relaying, was a message that was relayed to me. Unfortunately, John’s not here, otherwise he’d be saying this stuff himself.

Bill: 00:15:29 Hey, J-Dog, this is bill. I feel the emotion in the room and I’m, in essence, an outsider. I’m a new guy, right?

J-Dog: 00:15:38 Sure.

Bill: 00:15:40 What I’m hearing is that it seems like we’ve got a time commitment problem. It’s not that we don’t want to do the evaluation and the pull requests, it’s just that we don’t have the time for it. I think if we just try to state the problem as what it is, maybe we can come up with a viable solution. That’s why we’re offering people to learn and gain acceptance, so that we can help, right.

J-Dog: 00:16:10 Absolutely.

Bill: 00:16:11 Is there some way where we can state the problem precisely and unemotionally, so that maybe we can take all these smart people in the room here and work towards a viable solution?

J-Dog: 00:16:24 The core issue at this point, as I understand it, is that there’s really only one developer, John, who’s merging and doing anything in the Countyparty Repo. And you guys would like to see the changes merge faster. Is that a correct understanding of the issues?

Droplister: 00:16:44 Number one, it’s not merges [inaudible - 00:16:45] single change.

J-Dog: 00:16:48 After the last meeting where you said that there was no maintenance, I believe I saw a whole bunch of changes on the Repo, some stuff merged in. So, there is changes going on.

Droplister: 00:16:58 What John [inaudible - 00:16:58] did is he closed old issues that no one cares about and that are no one’s priorities. We’ve been talking about priorities as a project that you [inaudible - 00:17:06] Counterparty [inaudible – 00:17:07] for the last three months [inaudible - 00:17:09], and we can’t address them because we can come here and we call, and we say, “Hey, let’s have a forum where we can talk about these issues, and we bring them up. By the end of the day, there’s no one there in the meeting that’s a core team member to enact those changes. When those changes…and there’s pull requests that have been made John [inaudible - 00:17:28] been like, “How [inaudible - 00:17:31]?” There’s no merging, there’s no comments[?]. You can message John and he’ll say, “Oh, yeah, yeah, I’ll get back to you,” and then he doesn’t. [crosstalk - 00:17:40].

J-Dog: 00:17:41 Correct. And so the solutions, as you understand it are what to John?

Droplister: 00:17:43 [crosstalk - 00:17:43] access and more people.

J-Dog: 00:17:47 So your solution is to just give more commit access to people right off the bat, willy-nilly, and not to have them cut their teeth on Counterparty and merge things, and make sure they have the technical understanding before just giving them Repo access where they can mess stuff up?

Droplister: 00:18:03 [crosstalk - 00:18:03] being unfair. I think there can be more people get commit access is necessary and I think you don’t need to be a Level 10 Wizard to maintain a Repo. Mostly just basic things that need to be done. [crosstalk - 00:18:19]…

J-Dog: 00:18:19 Absolutely.

Droplister: 00:18:19 No [crosstalk - 00:18:20], we could have somebody [inaudible - 00:18:22] suggest it, and so it’s very difficult to have, like someone’s saying, an unemotional productive conversation because it keeps blaming things in a very strange way. [crosstalk - 00:18:33].

J-Dog: 00:18:33 Actually, all I’ve said is that I object to you, specifically, having commit access because there are a number of people in the community who don’t…

Droplister: 00:18:39 Which is off the table. We already [crosstalk - 00:18:40].

J-Dog: 00:18:42 Right. And so we’ve also said that…

Droplister: 00:18:43 All right.

J-Dog: 00:18:44 …FoldingCoin is working on getting access, and I think MandelDuck was also considering to come in as a CIP editor. So, it’s not like a…

Droplister: 00:18:53 But where it is discussed, though, because the process is so unclear to me.

J-Dog: 00:18:56 There are some chats on Telegram that happened, unbeknownst to you – and it’s not a hiding from the Counterparty community thing, it is a you, and Dan, and Dante harass people and nobody really wants to deal with you from what I’m seeing, and so the only people that come to these meetings are the people that are new, or the people who don’t really have an understanding history on [crosstalk - 00:19:23].

Dante: 00:19:22 Those are very unsubstantiated accusations and I know that you like to rewrite history, but I’m not going to listen…

J-Dog: 00:19:30 [crosstalk - 00:19:31]

Dante: 00:19:30 …but I’m not going to listen…

J-Dog: 00:19:33 Let’s just focus on the Repo access issue.

Dante: 00:19:35 Well, you’re not focusing. You’re not focusing…all you’re interested in doing is attacking people and claiming things that are not true.

Dante: 000:19:47 Don’t try, just… No, don’t try. I’m telling you what you’re doing. I’ve been listening patiently to you attack, attack, and attack, and I’m not going to sit back and let it go un-[crosstalk - 00:20:02]…

Chris: 00:20:03 Can I just step in here a second.

J-Dog: 00:20:05 Absolutely.

Chris: 00:20:10 Just before people get a bit [inaudible - 00:20:13]… I understand the frustration. Is it fair to say, in your opinion, J-Dog, you don’t feel that there’s anybody currently, other than John, who has the experience enough to release a production build of Counterparty. Is that a fair statement to say, do you think?

J-Dog: 00:20:32 Yeah, and even John hasn’t done a full [inaudible - 00:20:36] himself. [crosstalk - 00:20:39]…

Chris: 00:20:39 I would like…

J-Dog: 00:20:40 …my request before the last release went out, but even John is relatively new. I know that, Evan, I feel comfortable with you having Repo access, and you I feel comfortable with having Repo access. Because, I fully agree, we need to get somebody simple…there’s absolutely no reason to not merge simple documentation changes and things that aren’t controversial at all. But, unfortunately, the people who are trusted got chased away from the project.

Chris: 00:21:02 I think just with the kind of statement “give commit access” I think is a bit misleading. Because, in my mind that can mean two things, or if it does mean two things…so, it’s the ability to merge simple changes and then it’s the ability to create a production-ready release of Counterparty. I think those two things are a bit different. A lot of the frustration with people…it’s not that they want to have commit access so they can build a production release version, it’s more that they just want to see things merged, they want to see some process happening. It’s a shame that John couldn’t be here. John was very active a few months ago before the Foundation kind of dissolved. Then, recently, it seems to be that he’s been somewhat unavailable. But, just [crosstalk - 00:22:01]…

J-Dog: 00:22:02 Yeah, there’s some circumstances outside of his control that he can’t really do anything about.

Chris: 00:22:09 Just to get to the point, it kind of feels like he is…I’m not sure who has the power – it’s not a good word, but – who has the ability to give other people simple commit access for merging. It sounds like that John has that ability and he’s interested in dissolving some commit access to FoldingCoin, and maybe even of the projects in the space. Is that a fair statement to say?

J-Dog: 00:22:41 As I understand it, yeah.

Chris: 00:22:45 I guess the frustration with people is in, obviously, this isn’t in J-Dog to answer. He can’t answer. It’s all a bit like if and when, yeah, people are doing this but there’s no kind of clear ETA. I’m not sure if you have any thoughts on that.

J-Dog: 00:23:01 Chris, do you have any interest in becoming the CIP Editor?

Chris: 00:23:05 Well, yeah. I’ve expressed it. I’m more than happy to help out on that.

J-Dog: 00:23:11 Excellent.

Chris: 00:23:13 Also, I think from a project…in the space could have simple commit access, mainly not to create a release version, but to just…it’s easier for them to understand the code, and give feedback, and testing, and things like that. But, I expressed my willingness to John a few months ago. But, obviously, he seems busy, so I never got a reply…and he asked me, I think. I think that’s where the frustration is.

Bill: 00:23:49 [inaudible - 00:23:49], I just want to make sure I clarified it enough. We’re not at a position where we’re asking or ready for commit access. Our guys are working on learning it. They’re [inaudible - 00:23:57] right now. When we think it’s appropriate, we’ll definitely bring that suggestion up. At this point, we really just want to be helping. Christian, if you’re going to get CIP access, we’d love to work more close with you, if that’s possible.

Chris: 00:24:12 Well, sure, but that’s kind of “if.” I just told John and a few other people I’m happy to help out in that regard, but I didn’t hear much back from that.

J-Dog: 00:24:25 If you’re comfortable with getting commit access, I’m comfortable with that, and other people I’ve spoken to with comfortable with that. So, we can probably make that happen this week.

Chris: 00:24:34 Well, to be honest, I don’t have that much experience with the Counterparty codebase itself. That’s why being a CIP Editor is more…I understand the protocol, but not the actual pipe-in code [inaudible - 00:24:48] and the flow of how that works, so being a CIP Editor seems to be involved scrutinizing CIPs and giving opinions on feasibility and things like that. I would say that I was with Indiesquare and the Indiesquare guys, they do run their own slightly modified version of Counterparty and they do make changes, invoke fixes that might appear as pull requests sometimes to the Main Lib, but they don’t really request them to be merged in, because they’re not consensus changing, bus fixes, things like that. I guess what I‘m trying to say is I think there is a place, a project, in the space who use Counterparty Lib to have some sort of…not, necessarily, commit access, but some sort of way to speak to other developers in the space and [inaudible - 00:26:00] the others in Telegram. And whether that be GitComment, Git pull requests, things like that, it seems like a way to get some sort of consensus between stakeholders and people who are actually developing and using the code in the community. But, again, having said that, I’m not sure what that actually means, obviously. Because John’s not the only person with commit access, and I understand that…

J-Dog: 00:26:33 No, Robbie has it and Rueben has it.

Chris: 00:26:34 They were reluctant to even give it to John. Is it fair to say that the founders of the original [inaudible - 00:26:41] don’t feel there’s anybody that they could trust, or anybody who’s qualified, that has experience enough…

J-Dog: 00:26:51 Yeah, pretty much. It was down to Devon – Devon was coming and getting engaged, and the founders were close to stepping away and leaving things with Devon. Not to cause controversy, I’ll just say some stuff happened with the foundation and Devon walked away.

Dante: 00:27:09 Devon walked away before you dissolved the foundation, you guys.

J-Dog: 00:27:13 Okay.

Dante: 00:27:14 Devon walked away. The dates are the dates.

Chris: 00:27:17 Devon’s not here to say. It’s a shame that Devon walked away, but it sounds like…

Speaker: 00:27:25 He went to work for a competing project on BitCash.

Chris: 00:27:31 Yeah, maybe. I think that’s probably right. I think the whole Counterparty [inaudible - 00:27:37] a separate issue. I’m not even sure if it is and I don’t want to put words in Devon’s mouth. I know he expressed issues with thieves and things like that. But, putting that aside, it sounds like…I can really see two options. I think there’s an option where people start to create thoughts[?] of Counterparty and start building changes in a way to show that understanding the protocol, and then, if they can, somewhat, prove or show that they understand how the protocol works and can make releases, it sounds like the original people with commit access would be more inclined to give them commit access, or, possibly, hand it over. The other option is that I can see a situation where some people, through frustration, will end up creating a fork of Counterparty files. I don’t think it’s best for the community, but I can understand that frustration. I would be in favor for the first one because I think, generally, in cryptocurrency, as long as there’s consensus breaking changes, it’s better to be on the side of being conservative and not doing anything too rash. But, again, it would be nice to have John’s input here.

J-Dog: 00:29:13 As I understand the commit access, Christian, it’s an all or nothing thing, and I could be wrong. But as I understand it, once you step into the CIP Editor role, you get full commit access and you can merge changes in. Now, granted, it sounds like you’re only going to be merging in simple changes, but you would have access to merge in whatever changes you would like.

Chris: 00:29:41 I’m not, necessarily, asking, to have that ability, but I think – not me, personally – but I work with Indiesquare…not just Indiesquare but project like FoldingCoin, or active product in the space to have some sort of commit access sounds like the way forward. Like projects that have known to have used Counterparty for a while, be sure they understand how it works, be sure they’re not scammers, things like that. I think that would be a good binding force in the community. It sounds like, from what J-Dog’s saying, that that seems a likely thing to happen with FoldingCoin reaching out to John, and that could happen – not soon-ish, but it wouldn’t be an uncertain thing, like “it may happen sometime.” Then those people with commit access could start to review the pull requests and start to… My main interest is I want other people to get more familiar – other people, I mean myself, and they’re more familiar with building test builds of Counterparty, checking the unit tests and making sure these pull requests don’t have any effects on this, understanding what possible effect that might have. I think those kind of things are the most important things you don’t understand, and show before becoming a somewhat core developer. I think if people have some sort of FoldingCoin or Indiesquare, some of the projects are proven have some sort of commit access, they could start to show that, maybe.

J-Dog: 00:31:29 Chris, are you comfortable…I know you said you’re cool with CIP Editor, but are you comfortable working with Repo access and merging in some of the simple changes like NeedMoney and [inaudible - 00:31:40]? Not changes, but protocol.

Chris: 00:31:44 With Indiesquare, they run production versions of Counterparty with bug fixes and things and personal additions that they do. I would be comfortable not as a single entity, but with Indiesquare, to have that role, because we use Counterparty in production and we want bug fixes and performance updates, things like that. Indiesquare has recently done a lot of research on them, some bottlenecks that we’re having with Counterparty, but we’ve noticed a few things. I would say that it’s not so much that we want to be able to merge those changes in, but we want to be able to work with the current core developer and other people with commit access to test together, to release test versions, kind of like an official Counterparty-esq[?] release those things to make sure they’re all in consensus. I can see a nice situation where a project like FoldingCoin, Indiesquare, and John… If John is just going to be…he’s the main core developer who ultimately says yes or no, “This is, I think is ready for release,” then most of the work, he doesn’t really have to do. A lot of the work can be done by Indiesquare, FoldingCoin, etc., etc. And John is somewhat like an experienced developer who’s into code review and approve final merges like – what’s the word I’m looking for here – somebody like him, on Bitcoin they have…is it Vladimir? So, my understanding on the Bitcoin protocol, the people who do most of the coding, they don’t do the final merger. If John seems like he’s quite busy or has personal issues and he’s not super available, it seems that giving other projects in space commit access, so they’re able to be active and develop the final release build that’s a bit slower and that has the eyes of John and maybe Robbie, and they can stamp approve the final…

J-Dog: 00:34:22 FYI, John just, I think, said he’s going to be joining in just a sec.

Chris: 00:34:22 [crosstalk - 00:34:23], because they have the experience. Oh, awesome. Does that make sense what I’m saying? It seems like people just want to develop. But, they feel they’re going to develop, but nobody’s going to take a look at it, or nobody’s going to use it. I think that’s the [inaudible - 00:34:39] that people have.

J-Dog: 00:34:39 Absol… It makes sense. We need to have 5, 10, 15 people being able to review the code, and it’s a really [crosstalk - 00:34:46]…

Chris: 00:34:45 Yeah, yeah.

J-Dog: 00:34:47 …situation that we’re in right now where it’s just one guy and he’s, unfortunately, can’t really work on it as much as he would like. So, yeah, what you’re saying totally makes sense. I’m cool with you being CIP Editor and what you said about Indiesquare makes sense.

Chris: 00:35:04 Yeah. And I agree, we need people with experience of actually creating release versions, and who know the ins and outs and the [inaudible - 00:35:14], to also be a decent pair of eyes. It sounds like John – no offense to him – but he is new to that role, as well. And the people who had experience, such as Rueben and Devin, are no longer active. So, we’re in a slow process and it’s better to, maybe, be slow and cautious.

J-Dog: 00:35:39 Nuthin’s broke. Everything’s running. It’s not ideal. But, as the fees go up, we need to address the MPMA and get that thing merged so that we can have really cheap transactions.

Chris: 00:35:51 Yeah, also…SegWit, which is something that Indiesquare is willing to work on, as well.

Speaker: 00:35:57 [inaudible - 00:35:57] the code’s not working.

Chris: 00:36:01 Yeah, I agree. The code’s been great. I think, probably, if I can put words in Dan’s mouth, it’s just a lot of passionate people who want to develop and they just feel like, “What’s the point if I develop it if it’s going to go nowhere?” I think that’s the general feeling. Is that fair to say, Dan?

Droplister: 00:36:26 This is the fourth meeting we’ve had and it seems like we’ve come to the same conclusion as the first meeting. I think it’s a shame that this many people spin their wheels, burning their resources, when, on [inaudible - 00:36:42] calls there are developers and competent in their own ways. I’m still a little confused about how J-Dog is simultaneously not a protocol developer, but also as a co-qualifier and protocol developer. I think everyone [crosstalk - 00:36:57]…

Chris: 00:36:58 Well, I think Jay…

Droplister: 00:36:58 …to contribute. [crosstalk - 00:37:00] right now we have been frustrated and I think we can address it through open forums like this. We’ve been doing it as our first one, and [inaudible - 00:37:09]working, we’re making an in-path, and we really need people like John, who has commit access, to attend, or else it becomes hard to consider them for developers. The people who want access, saying like, “Go to hell,” [inaudible - 00:37:25] access.

J-Dog: 00:37:27 Well, hey, John. John just joined us.

John: 00:37:37 Hi. We’re setting up the microphone.

Speaker: 00:37:40 Perfect. Hi, John [crosstalk - 00:37:50]?

John: 00:37:49 How’s everyone? Are we starting off in a minute, or so?

Speaker: 00:37:54 No, we’ve been [inaudible - 00:37:55] this for a while.

Speaker: 00:37:56 Yeah, we’re running since 8:07.

John: 00:37:59 Okay, we’re [inaudible - 00:38:00].

J-Dog: 00:38:00 Hey, John. We’re all here. What we’re talking about is a Repo, it’s maintenance, and how we can, maybe, lighten the load on you in terms of Repo maintenance.

John: 00:38:11 Okay. Can someone get me up to speed on what’s been talked about regarding the platform?

Chris: 00:38:22 I’ll just give how I’ve understood it. There’s a lot of frustration in the community of people who want to dev – they want to help out – but they’re not sure exactly how. People make pull requests to the Lib, but they feel that they’re not being looked at, and they feel that the people who are active, other than yourselves, they’re not active, but they haven’t given commit access to other developers. I think that’s one side. The other side kind of feels that giving commit access is a big thing and you don’t want to give it too rashly and that things are moving slowly, but we need to have… I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t understood it correctly, but it seems that there’s general frustration, and people just want to know who’s doing what role, or is it possible to get other developers helping out on the source[?], things like this, and you’re the only person with commit access at the moment. I suppose people are eager to hear your thoughts and how active do you plan to be Do you want to share the other developers? Who do you think would be a good candidate to share developments, etc.

John: 00:40:03 Okay. We are using, right now, the technology in-house for getting some enhancements[?] to Counterparty regarding several fixes going on that Index D branch, which should be mainline going forward. We’ve been trying to get the current master to use his ability with something else besides BCERAC[?] fork of Bitcoin, but it’s not workable right now. The fact that we first need to get Counterparty mainlined with Bitcoin’s latest version…it’s something we’re doing right now. We’re testing it non-stop in-house.

Chris: 00:41:05 You mean yourself and your project?

John: 00:41:08 Yeah, we’re using Counterparty in our internal projects and that means I’m having all my workforce working with Counterparty code. There’s also the fact that most PRs that need to be somehow approved need more peer reviews right now. The only one who has peer reviewed a current CIP is Droplister – Dan. I just want to review, maybe, one of the most important part of getting access commit in mainline is having a lot of people test it. Right now…

Chris: 00:42:09 Yes. I agree. I think Dan has done some good work reviewing some of the pull requests, and I think I’m a little bit to blame here, that I should get Indiesquare to also do some testing. It seems like the next thing that the community needs to focus on is testing and Counterparty, with Index D, running the latest version of Bitcoin core. I tested that a while back, but I haven’t tested it recently. It seems that having your projects, and Indiesquare, and FoldingCoin, and the projects in the space testing that latest version is the way to go forward. Has there been an official pull request – has that changed, or…? Or people keep kind of doing it ad hocs – separately? It seems to be there’s not one thing or piece of source that everyone’s testing it seems.

John: 00:43:08 There’s no current pull request for in the D branch. Like now, everyone who runs a federated node is running really old code. I think our main concern should be focusing on the Index D Branch using the latest Bitcoin version, which you’ll enable to get some [inaudible - 00:43:38] inside [inaudible - 00:43:39], enable SegWit Lightning Network and all that.

Chris: 00:43:48 Who creates that pull request? Are you working on the pull requests, or are you expecting somebody else to create that pull request, or…?

John: 00:43:57 I think, right now, Index D Branch – it ’s under Devon’s ownership. I’ll check real quick here.

Chris: 00:44:13 I didn’t catch that last part.

John: 00:44:15 Index D Branch is under Devon’s account. I don’t know if I can…wait a second. I’m checking out…

Chris: 00:44:28 Yeah, I think it was on Devon’s branch. I remember, when I talked to [inaudible - 00:44:32], you said it was on there. But, you said that you’re currently testing an Index D version [crosstalk - 00:44:41] with Counterparty.

John: 00:44:41 In fact, I’m using in production right now.

Chris: 00:44:46 Okay, you’re using it in production, so it sounds like that that could become a candidate, or that could become a pull request for others to base off [crosstalk - 00:44:59] tasks.

John: 00:44:59 I’m pretty [crosstalk - 00:44:59] the Index D Branch, as it is…I haven’t run into any [inaudible - 00:45:07] problem or some show-stopping bug. It seems there’s a pull request. Wait a second. Yeah, there’s a pull request.

Chris: 00:45:22 Just that aside, let me ask you John [inaudible - 00:45:24], what do you think the Counterparty Lib needs most in terms of support and of the developers? Do you think another developer or another entity should have commit access, or do you think there’s certain roles that need to be filled?

John: 00:45:44 I think focusing right now on commit access isn’t something really concerning. I would focus mostly on having testers, having peer reviews, having people pointing out errors on the current pull requests. For example, in the D Branch…has all the functionality, but there’s no updating of the retrial, there’s no updating of document to make it work. In fact, there’s…to get Index D working, there’s some stuff that is documented and that’s [inaudible - 00:46:29]. If you need to use the latest Bitcoin version, you have to modify some configuration files and also get [inaudible - 00:46:44] Counterparty [inaudible - 00:46:46] to work with a non-duplicated RT function for getting the block count, if I recall correctly. There’s that.

Chris: 00:47:02 You’re breaking up quite a bit. I’m not sure if it’s just me, but I only get every other word.

John: 00:47:11 Yeah, that’s [inaudible - 00:47:11]

Speaker: 00:47:12 Yeah, he’s [inaudible - 00:47:12] a little bit.

Speaker: 00:47:14 My end, too.

Chris: 00:47:16 I think there’s quite a few small pull requests. There’s pull requests, like, adding CIPs, changes to documentation, small bug fixes. It seems that’s quite a lot for John – for you only – to manage it. Is that fair to say, or is there a role for somebody to…or another person with commit access to handle those issues?

John: 00:47:47 That wouldn’t hurt, really. However, most…

Chris: 00:47:53 You know, stuff like the wallets and stuff. It sounds like you’re more focused on core development and things like that. All the smaller issues… It sounds like it’s quite productive to have some other people, or other entities, with commit access adjusting those. Not really touching the core protocol or doing major changes, but bug fixes, and proposing, and merging – things like this.

John: 00:48:20 Yeah, that will be pretty productive. There’s a lot of pull requests, for example, on Counterwallet, which, in my opinion, we should work towards replacing Counterwallet all together. [laugh]There’s so many…

Chris: 00:48:42 Oh, yeah. I think Counterwallet’s like a 2014 Bitcoin wallet, isn’t it, pretty much?

John: 00:48:48 Yeah, yeah. It’s something we should replace with something more modern, more to the current standards.

Chris: 00:48:59 Yeah, and I suppose as far as wallets are concerned, personally, I feel that it’s nice to have that Counterparty has its reference wallet, but it seems to be not the main focus of Counterparty. There’s plenty of other third-party wallets. But, that is a reference, that people see it first. Yeah, it does seem quite old.

Bill: 00:49:30 I agree with that because [inaudible – 49:31] Freewallet’s great, Indiesquare’s great. I would also agree that the wallet doesn’t necessarily mean…the Bitcoin core wallet, that still is pretty ancient and nobody uses it, really, for – at least to my knowledge – people don’t really use it as much anymore. If resources on development hours are kind of constrained, I would say putting it towards the wallet isn’t much of a necessity, because you are right, people like Indiesquare and Freewallet are going to fill that void.

Chris: 00:50:04 But having said that, if there are people who like to work on them and people are making both fixes and pull requests, it will be nice for somebody to have a look at them, [inaudible - 00:50:16] them, and merge them in.

Droplister: 00:50:23 Hey guys – this is Dan. I just want to chime in really quick. Because we’ve been talking about really big problems – one of the things I just noticed that we could connect right now, that we’ve been trying to connect to these meetings the past two months is that [inaudible - 00:50:34] one of their big priorities is CIPSEND, having Multiparty, Multisends, activated. I have definitely pointed them to the pull requests and told them to review it. But why don’t, maybe, you, John, tell the teams [inaudible - 00:50:47] who has resources and interest in getting CIP 10 added to the codebase – what you did, what you think needs to be done, and maybe some action items for them so we can have something come out of this – like we’ve been trying to connect for a couple months now. I want you guys to just focus on that, maybe, [inaudible - 00:51:04]too myopic. I think that might be useful for you guys, get [inaudible - 00:51:07] this call.

Chris: 00:51:10 Can I just jump in before John does? Sorry to be rude, but I kind of think that it seems before the CIP [inaudible - 00:51:18] it seems the main priority is to upgrade Counterparty to use Index D and [inaudible - 00:51:24].

Droplister: 00:51:26 Yeah, I’d agree with that.

Chris: 00:51:28 I’ll just hand it over to John.

John: 00:51:32 To that opinion, we should focus, first, on getting Index D Branch inline and then getting stuff like MBMA, CIP 10, CIP 6, which all enables more long messages. Working with CIP 10 right now, I’m thinking [inaudible - 00:51:58] or use CIP 10 to enable [inaudible - 00:52:03].

J-Dog: 00:52:06 Man, you’re cutting out super bad, like for multiple seconds at a time at this point.

John: 00:52:11 Yeah, my connection isn’t that stellar here. Let me check…[inaudible - 00:52:17]. Wait a second.

Chris: 00:52:22 I think what I heard is that he was saying something about CIP 10 and [inaudible - 00:52:26], which [inaudible - 00:52:28] are the smart [inaudible - 00:52:29] tracks used in Lightning.

John: 00:52:33 I’m thinking we could get a Lightning function [inaudible - 00:52:36] with MPMA, which is CIP 10 and SegWit. That would make it easier for people to use. For example, a leak with assets, like FoldingCoin, or PepeCash, or any other [inaudible - 00:52:54] asset in Counterparty to use the Lightning layer. I don’t know – I’m just throwing the idea out there, but…

Chris: 00:53:03 Yeah, I know. I think it’s cool and I think TransAct’s one thing that would make Counterparty to stand out from other coins, because it’s on Bitcoin, we can use [inaudible - 00:53:12] Lightning. I guess I would personally say, well, that’s great. My ideal line of development is Index D with [inaudible - 00:53:24] Bitcoins, SegWit, then CIP 10 – the MultiAsset and MultiSend. I think the MultiAsset and MultiSend could have come before SegWit, but SegWit is going to make a few changes. It would require a new message format to send, I imagine, which means that you’d have, then, change CIP 10 again after it. It seems better to get SegWit first and then just deprecate, so all future CIPs use SegWit. That seems to be clean and [crosstalk - 00:53:59].

John: 00:54:00 Also, having SegWit will allow anyone to create a chain of transactions at Counterparty.

Chris: 00:54:11 Of course, yeah.

John: 00:54:12 That malleability problem without SegWit makes it impossible to create long chains of transactions.

Chris: 00:54:22 Yeah. That kind of seems like the focus. CIP 10 has been worked on and it seems to be [inaudible - 00:54:31] with SegWit – just a proposal in this [inaudible - 00:54:36]. There’s ways to do it, but…

Droplister: 00:54:38 There’s ways to do that[?].

Chris: 00:54:37 In SegWit?

Droplister: 00:54:41 Yeah, there’s PR stack[?].

Chris: 00:54:42 Oh really? Are you sure?

Droplister: 00:54:44 Yes.

Chris: 00:54:46 [laugh] Okay. Who worked on that, just out of interest?

Droplister: 00:54:48 Devon. Full requests for CIP 6, full requests for [inaudible - 00:54:53]. They’re not production ready, but this [inaudible - 00:54:54].

Chris: 00:54:56 Okay. Yeah.

Droplister: 00:54:58 [inaudible - 00:54:58] that’s a stable foundation with the latest Bitcoin. It’s probably, in SegWit, would be a strong foundation, a single foundation [inaudible - 00:55:07] primary. My only point is that [inaudible - 00:55:10] interest and priorities [inaudible - 00:55:13] having the distribution. Top left is defense, and because if you have resources and developers, and they have [crosstalk - 00:55:19] good enough just specifically…

Chris: 00:55:19 Yeah.

Droplister: 00:55:21 …right now we have the author of that CIP on the phone. It might be useful for them to talk [inaudible - 00:55:26]. But they can do it offline [inaudible - 00:55:28].

John: 00:55:37 There’s also something I’m doing right now in my really scarce free time, which is a Counterparty Library on JavaScript, which uses a [inaudible – 55:58] proxy. So you could create more snappy adaptations using Counterparty. Right now everything has to be done via HTTP [inaudible - 00:56:10], and…

Chris: 00:56:11 Have you seen Counter’s JS Library? I use that. It’s like a JavaScript Library written by a Japanese guy here.

John: 00:56:20 I saw it. There’s a lot of stuff and getting experienced[?] with it, but, as I told you, I’m mainly focusing on getting WebSocket support…

Chris: 00:56:36 Okay.

John: 00:56:37 …to get rid of back and forth messages and make applications more snappy. For example, I’m working…I’m in [inaudible - 00:56:48], I’m using these on a change engine using Counterparty as a backend – a private Counterparty, and it uses WebSockets for all communications, and it runs pretty snappy.

Chris: 00:57:05 That sounds interesting.

John: 00:57:06 Yeah, it’s almost ready for public consumption. I’ll be sure to make everyone aware of it when it’s ready.

Chris: 00:57:19 Yeah, great. Looking forward to that. Just to get back to the main point of today’s meeting…going forward, what happened. This is my view of it – if there isn’t one already, there needs to be some sort of official pull request for Index D update. We’ll benefit from having at least one or two of the entities active on the Git Repo, if only just to review 6, merge in 6, and just to participate more in testing. The things that will be great for the community to test is the aforementioned pull requests for Index D. Is that a fair summary?

John: 00:58:19 Yeah, that pretty much sums it up I think. Go on…

Chris: 00:58:28 Who decides that? I guess my fear is that after this call, it all sounds great, then nothing happens again for months. [laugh – 58:41]

John: 00:58:42 [laugh]

Chris: 00:58:43] So, who…I expressed my willingness to help out as a CIP Editor. Is that something you decide, John? It’s quite difficult to get community decisions on things now that the Foundation is dissolved.

John: 00:58:54 I’m going to check if I can add people to have commit access. Wait a second…this is a new computer and I don’t have my…

Chris: 00:59:13 It doesn’t have to be decided just now, but…

John: 00:59:19 To confirm if I can ask people for commit access…wait a second.

Chris: 00:59:27 Yeah. I think, as far as going forward, I don’t know, it will be nice to have some sort of mechanism where the community…I think J-Dog spoke about this once – about some sort of mechanism for projects in the community to give their voice or express changes and things, what CIP we should work on, who should get community access. I’m not sure anybody has thoughts on that. But, it sounds like one developer giving it to another developer might not be the best way.

John: 00:59:59 Okay. Let me check. If I can add people to the Repo.

Chris: 01:00:15 I think we should also put remove people, as well. There seems to be at least two people [laugh – 01:00:20] on the Repo who are no longer part of the project, as well.

John: 01:00:23 Okay. I cannot add people for commit access.

Chris: 01:00:29 You can’t?

John: 01:00:30 I think the only person able to do that is Robbie.

Chris: 01:00:34 Okay, but it sounds like you, as a current co-developer, would be in a good position. And you, I suppose, along with other people in the community, to recommend adding people to.

John: 01:00:51 Here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll ask Robbie to add, I believe, two more people with commit access mainly for from the main long-standing projects in the community, and have some people help with these [inaudible - 01:01:12] that really needs to go forward more promptly.

Chris: 01:01:18 Yeah, that sounds great. Again, I’m still thinking that…I suppose, at the moment, it sounds like maybe this is the best way. It would be the original core developers –yourself and Robbie, maybe Rueben, if he’s still available – to give their voice or opinions on who would be suitable candidates for commit access.

John: 01:01:43 Yeah. [inaudible - 01:01:44]. I’m going to have a chat with Robbie so we can get some people on board.

Chris: 01:01:57 I’ve expressed – I think FoldingCoin have hired two developers and they’re kind of for the long-standing projects. In my books they seem like good guys. Of course I would recommend myself and Indiesquare, only because we’re actively using Counterparty, and we’re fixing bugs, and using our own kind of patched version. But, I’m happy to hear other people’s opinions on it, of course.

John: 01:02:27 I’m going to chalk it up, maybe tomorrow Ill see Robbie, let me check… I’m going to see him later today, in fact.

Speaker: 01:02:40 I’m actually pretty good tonight, actually [inaudible - 01:02:42].

John: 01:02:45 One second. Is Sam trying to talk, or…?

Sam: 01:02:53 Oh, I’m sorry. No. I would just say, yeah, I think Chris Moss would be a great person to have commit access.

John: 01:03:00 Thank you. [laugh]

Speaker: 01:03:04 I would concur, also.

Speaker: 01:03:07 I like what you’re doing, Chris, I think it’s really nice the way you’re wrapping this up because this is a long call and this is an important call. You’re moving toward action items, like where we’re moving, and I feel like several things have surfaced in regards to John wants to talk to Robbie. There are candidates, maybe, for increased commit access. I think several people’s complaints, maybe, or disappointments, or frustrations were heard. I think that was important. Is there anything else they want to bring up, is that the [crosstalk - 01:03:38]…

Chris: 01:03:39 It’s just one lesser [crosstalk - 01:03:39]. Again, calls are great, but I think most developers…I would like some sort of IRC or some sort of chat-based help…

Speaker: 01:03:54 Sure.

Chris: 01:03:55 …where we can keep track, because, what I fear might happen is after this call – some people go to Discourse, some people go to Telegram, some people go to Slack, and then the picture of who’s doing what or what’s going on becomes confusing.

NeedMoney: 01:04:07 Actually, as an aside, those three platforms – for the [phonetic 01:04:11] Minera Project, specifically, I run a relay bot between Slack and IRC, and I used to run a relay bot between Telegram and IRC until the scammers actually got ahold of it. I could re-set that up for Slack, Telegram, and Discourse, so all three of them are into the same room.

Chris: 01:04:28 That’s actually good. I hang out on the L&D Slack and they have a bot, or a channel there – IRC. It’s kind of good to see. [crosstalk - 01:04:38], by the way.

Speaker: 01:04:38 [inaudible - 01:04:39]

Chris: 01:04:40 I think the Slack dev, for me, seems to be somewhat hobbit[?] in the moment, but…

Speaker: 01:04:45 Yeah, it seems like the hub for sure. We’ve been using this Discourse because the voice channels, the reason I prefer them or what I like about them is that it’s harder to be uncordial on a phone call. [laugh -01:04:59].

Chris: 01:05:00 Okay. [laugh - 01:05:00] I think Slack is, generally, it’s terrible for voice calls anyway.

Speaker: 01:05:09 I’m [inaudible - 01:05:09] out of my cell, personally, guys, but I’m going to shut up maybe.

Chris: 01:05:16 No, no. I think I’ve got to run soon, actually. It’s been a long, but productive, call I think. But, just, NeedMoney90 – if that’s your name – yeah, it’d be great if you want to chat about that bot more in the Slack so we can take a look at…

Speaker: 01:05:34 We could slow down the pace of the phone calls and, maybe, in between have text meetings, where it’s just like we show up and then for a text meeting. We do both at different paces. We could try that.

Chris: 01:05:45 Yeah. I think once the ball gets rolling with developers again, it would be nice to have some sort of regular chat meeting, like audio. I think most of the work goes on chat because people aren’t always available.

?? 01:06:02 [crosstalk - 01:06:03]

Speaker: 01:06:03 You can link the code, you can drop links, you copy/paste.

Speaker: 01:06:10 It’s a synchronous medium.

John: 01:06:14 Just [inaudible - 01:06:14] Robbie about the issue here. I will let you all know when he gets back to me.

Chris: 01:06:23 Okay, that’s great.

Speaker: 01:06:24 As far as the next developer meeting, can we get on a regular monthly schedule? Dan, since you’re organizing these, whenever you feel is best. But, once a month instead of…I think the last one was two weeks ago.

Droplister: 01:06:37 This was sort of an emergency meeting with a purpose. [laugh – 01:06:40] The way I’ve been doing it…it’s kind of weird because I’ve been doing it through Doodle, and converging on whatever’s most popular.

Speaker: 01:06:48 [inaudible - 01:06:49] around people with commit access.

Droplister: 01:06:51 It’s like a Catch 22, it’s designed by committee or something fails.

Chris: 01:06:57 I like [inaudible - 01:06:57], actually.

NeedMoney: 01:06:58 We need at least one person with commit access at every single meeting. That needs to be one of the absolute requirements.

Chris: 01:07:08 The next step, I guess, for John to talk to Robbie and have some candidates for commit access. I might ping Robbie, as well, because I haven’t actually spoken to him personally, so it’d be nice to say hi.

Droplister: 01:07:22 Generally, what I do is I post this audio, I transcribe this audio – I post it to the Counterparty forum thread and then that becomes the staging point for next meeting. It would easier, I agree, to have just…the meeting’s always at this time. I’ve sort of been testing out good times through this Doodle thing, but point well taken, and look out for that.

Chris: 01:07:45 I think, probably, unless anybody has anything else to add. I would say going forward, John is going to chat to Robbie. John, if you could confirm this situation with the pull requests, Index D, just to make it have an official link, or you can drop in dev, so people can…

John: 01:08:07 In fact, I will check in the pull requests. It needs to update Bitcoin to latest version and change some people for use, and I think…

Chris: 01:08:20 They deprecate or something, didn’t they, in the latest version?

Character limit reached continued below…

John: 01:08:24 There’s a deprecated method in RPC[?] [inaudible - 01:08:28]. But, yes, I think it’s good to go, in fact.

Speaker: 01:08:37 So, we’re going to venture to focus develop an effort if you are interested and have skills, in whatever capacity – specifically on Index D and CIP 6. Is that what we’re trying to…in the sense of everyone trying to work on their own thing? Maybe we’re trying to corral it on, focus on Index D? Is that what [inaudible - 01:09:03]?

Chris: 01:09:05 I think the main thing – the first thing – is for John to speak to Robbie to get a few of the people with commit access, that has CIP Editor, things like that, and then we can have more of a formal process around what CIPs will be worked on. But, in the meantime, if people want to help out, it seems that John is going to make a few changes to the Index C[?] to work with the latest Bitcoin core, and then people can just use that and test it a bit.

Speaker: 01:09:35 Cool.

Chris: 01:09:40 But it sounds like John’s testing it in production, himself, but it will be nice for people to test it, I think.

Speaker: 01:09:46 If you could point to that, John, so we could run it. I’m actually setting up a new [inaudible - 01:09:48] do some development on it, because the one I have right now I can’t really test on because I’m using it.

Chris: 01:09:56 I have a meeting with Indiesquare on Monday and they gave me a service to try the latest Counterparty with Index D on, so I can spin it up, as well.

Speaker: 01:10:07 We’ll be able to share data on it, or whatever.

NeedMoney: 01:10:11 I don’t recall If John was here for this discussion, but there are a number of documentation changes for the Repository that have been made a pull requests that I think we should have merged, including one that I made a couple months ago.

Speaker: 01:10:22 Which one is that[?]?

NeedMoney: 01:10:25 Yeah. Let me go pull it up. It’s involving the past [inaudible - 01:10:27] on Counterparty because the documentation gives the wrong RPC password. So, literally, you can’t use Counterparty without that.

John: 01:10:45 That’s probably something that flew under the radar for me.

Chris: 01:10:50 I think that thing, once John speaks with Robbie and gets a few other people on the Git, that’s probably one of the smallest tasks that that [inaudible - 01:11:00] new people could look at, I think.

John: 01:11:07 That’s the fact that currently most Counterparty main servers are paid by some individual, rather than a community manager. In fact, managing those servers has become a chore for someone who, in fact…maybe he doesn’t want to be the only manager – namely J-Dog. He’s a good guy. He’s been all around doing everything needed to get Counterparty running, but he’s carrying all these costs by himself and I think we should make the whole community for those costs because that have been piling up. I think he’s covering, right now, about four or five servers, and that’s out of pocket for him.

Chris: 01:12:19 Yeah, I know. I agree. A lot of gratitude to J-Dog. I don’t know what I’d do without XChain.

John: 01:12:32 I want him to weigh in about that. I’m pinging him right now.

J-Dog: 01:12:39 It would be nice to get some donations, but given what a debacle it was to collect donations for Counterparty and hold onto them, and stuff for the Foundation, I’m really eating a lot of costs for Counterparty, but I’m also really hesitant to accept any funds lest I be attacked again. That’s kind of where I’m at. Yeah, it would be nice if I wasn’t eating so much each month.

Dante: 01:13:07 It’s your business, bro. You’re in a business. Don’t call the whambulance, right now. Stop, J-Dog.

J-Dog: 01:13:15 Dante…

Dante: 01:13:15 It’s your business. You have a business. You’re paying to run your business. Okay? That’s all. Simple.

J-Dog: 01:13:23 Okay. If I can address that? You’re correct. I host two servers on my own. I also host two servers for Counterparty. I’m not here to play a whambulance.

Dante: 01:13:33 Wait. Dude, you were always reimbursed by the Foundation for the other servers, so I don’t know why you’re crying about it. And you held all the money.

NeedMoney: 01:13:44 Dante. Is this necessary at this moment?

Chris: 01:13:47 I think, to be fair, J-Dog didn’t bring it up. J-Dog was asked.

J-Dog: 01:13:51 Now you see why I’m resistant to [laugh] [inaudible - 01:13:53] any funds. No, I’m good.

Dante: 01:13:55 Because you want to say your stuff and be unchallenged. I’m listening to lies, and I’m challenging your lies.

John: 01:14:09 [inaudible - 01:14:09] up the Counterparty community.

Chris: 01:14:15 That aside, let’s just put that aside. Just going back to development…what were we saying?

Speaker: 01:14:28 I think we’re done with that, basically.

Chris: 01:14:31 Yeah, I think so. It’s probably a good time to finish. Basically, I look forward to hearing what Robbie says and John, if you could post any updates to have to the Index D in Slack or a place for others, they can look, that would be great, as well.

Speaker: 01:14:52 I’ve just got two more things. One, John, is Telegram easiest for us talking? [inaudible - 01:14:59] developing on Counterparty?

John: 01:15:03 Yeah, in fact, voice calls, for me, are kind of difficult because my country bandwidth is shit. [laugh - 01:15:16].

Speaker: 01:15:17 Okay. So, Telegram’s still good?

John: 01:15:20 Yeah, because in reading form, I can read it on nights before. That’s good.

Speaker: 01:15:29 Okay, cool. And then, Christian, what’s going to be the best for you? Would you like to work with us a little as we progress? We’re not at the point where we’re ready, but we are working to that point, so what’s the best place to communicate with you? Just here, on this board?

Chris: 01:15:45 Probably Slack, but Telegram, as well. Mainly, I have Slack open all the time. But Telegram, sometimes, closes itself, and I don’t see things.

Speaker: 01:15:55 Okay. All right. Fair enough.

Chris: 01:15:56 Yeah, but, I’m definitely interested because it would be nice to reach out with Indiesquare and FoldingCoin.

Speaker: 01:16:03 Oh, for sure.

Chris: 01:16:06 That’s kind of been around for a while.

Speaker: 01:16:08 Yeah, man.

Chris: 01:16:09 It’d be nice…if you ever come to Tokyo, let me know.

Speaker: 01:16:12 Oh, I definitely will, I’ll take you up on that. I don’t know when I’ll be there, but I’ll take you…

Chris: 01:16:17 Bitcoin’s scaling it this year, so maybe…

Speaker: 01:16:21 And you’re on the Counterparty Slack, right?

Chris: 01:16:24 Yeah.

John: 01:16:26 Guys, the only problem I see with using Slack is that it doesn’t store the history of chats. Sometimes information’s lost [inaudible - 01:16:36].

J-Dog: 01:16:39 I think NeedMoney was talking about setting up a relay between Slack and Telegrams.

NeedMoney: 01:16:42 Yes, I was.

J-Dog: 01:16:43 So, NeedMoney, I’ll work with you on that and get you [inaudible - 01:16:47].

NeedMoney: 01:16:47 Actually [crosstalk - 01:16:47] host, the Slacker’s [inaudible - 01:16:50] and Telegram just [inaudible - 01:16:50] the back and forth.

J-Dog: 01:16:53 Perfect. Okay.

Chris: 01:16:59 Yeah, I think Slack’s good for general chat, things like that. But, obviously, kind of like a historical record of dev, it’s not the best place. If NeedMoney can work with J-Dog on IRC and bots, that would be awesome.

Droplister: 01:17:17 Hey, J-Dog, this is Dan. I would say, in regards to the server costs, in my own opinion, I wouldn’t attack you if you used the funds that you have from the Foundation. I think it would be a fair, good use of those funds. That’s just my own personal opinion. [crosstalk - 01:17:32]

J-Dog: 01:17:33 Dan, I appreciate that, but the Foundation decided how those were spent, so they can only be spent on funding CIP. But, I appreciate it. Thank you.

Chris: 01:17:45 Did FoldingCoin…you said you had two things you wanted to talk and you only mentioned one. Was there something else?

Speaker: 01:17:55 I can’t remember [crosstalk - 01:17:55].

Speaker: 01:17:55 That’s [crosstalk - 01:17:55].

Chris: 01:17:57 You what?

Speaker: 01:18:00 Oh, yeah. [laugh] No, mostly we were just here to [inaudible - 01:18:04] the conversation. But after you guys, Jared and Tyler, learn code base, because what we learned from that last meeting, and, definitely, from what we learned this meeting, is we definitely need to put the time into learning the code base, so that way we can contribute in an effective manner. We’re chugging along. I know Jared and Tyler, as they get any questions or something, I’m sure we’ll hit you guys up. It’d be nice if we could some guidance. So far, everybody in this channel I’ve talked to independently and everybody’s been helpful, so we’ll continue talking to you guys, getting our feet wet, and learning more.

Chris: 01:18:38 Yeah, awesome. I hope you don’t mind if I just summarize…

Speaker: 01:18:45 Yeah, [inaudible - 01:18:44].

Chris: 01:18:46 …and then we could probably call it a day, because otherwise Dan has a lot of stuff to transcribe. Yeah, I think there’s a lot of positive energy and once we get some sort of structure back in place, there’s exciting things to work on. I know at Indiesquare we’re looking at atomic swaps and things like that. I have a Ledger Wallet that is pretty much finished, but I just need to send to Ledger and get some testing on. I think John’s interested in making Lightning for Counterparty, and I’m interested in that, as well, because I play around with Lightning. So, I think there’s definitely some positive energy, exciting stuff coming.

John: 01:19:28 I have been, also, working on getting [inaudible - 01:19:31] to work with Counterparty via web applications.

Chris: 01:19:37 Awesome. Maybe this can be another dev, but I think Hardware Wallet, or something, we’ll leave for another time. But, yeah, that’s cool to hear. Anyway, unless anybody has anything else to add, we’ll wrap up?

Droplister: 01:19:57 Good call, everybody.

Chris: 01:19:59 Yep, nice to see you.

Speaker: 01:20:00 [inaudible - 01:20:00].

Chris: 01:20:01 Take care.

Droplister: 01:20:03 Thanks for coming.

Speaker: 01:20:03 Bye, [inaudible - 01:20:03].

NeedMoney: 01:20:06 …good evening.