Bitcoin’s Gentoo Client Taken Over Yet Another Time by Creator, Luke Jr.

It has been recently revealed that Luke Jr., creator of the package, Gentoo client, has attempted to steal and take control over the client for the second time now since 2014. An evidence shows that Luke attempted to merge five commits into Gentoo:master from luke-jr:bitcoin-0.16.1.

Reddit users did not have it in 2014 and have started to take an opposing stance on Luke Jr.’s actions. In the past, reddit users complained that some Bitcoin addresses were compromised, with many pointing fingers at Luke for purposely pressing Bitcoin into Gentoo patches.

This forceful act made many reddit users believe that Bitcoin was rid of its decentralization in the process. For a complete understanding, a reddit user, namely kyledrake, clarified what went on with the Gentoo patches. He wrote:

“This is a hard-coded blacklist backed into what users are expecting to be an easier way to install a stable release of Bitcoin core. As a result, this package would not faithfully achieve the goal of providing the stable released version of Bitcoin core, as it has been modified for political reasons.”

As for the political reasons, it seems that it involved Satoshi Dice’s transactions – which, based on many assumptions, were debarred due to Luke’s personal and religious belief. Satoshi Dice being a betting platform, was one that was against Luke’s religion, hence he created the package that blocked it altogether.

Luke, however, told a different story, in which he blamed the Distributed Denial of Services, DDoS attacks as being responsible for the blacklisting. While some might have gotten rid of the assumption that Luke was acting on his religious views, one Reddit user, namely optionsanarchist does not think Luke’s explanation made any sense.

In particular, it was shared that:

“It’s not a DoS attack […] and even if I grant that the betting sites are “spamming the blockchain”, Counterparty and Mastercoin are not in the same category. They are not 3rd party entities, they are a protocol which people are voluntarily choosing to use. It seems to me that Luke-Jr has a malicious intent.”

It appears that the blacklist restricts seven features altogether, three of which have been previously mentioned as Mastercoin, Satoshi Dice and Counterparty. The remaining ones include BetCoin Dice, CHBS, SatoshiBones and Lucky Bity. Furthermore, the blacklist code apparently has been created in a way that automatically decides and prioritizes which transactions to accept and which to omit.

As a response to this blacklisting problem, another Reddit user, sicks3144, elaborated that Bitcoin would be “worthless” as a payment system, given that it chooses which transactions it would accept and not. The individual said that

“it’s basically a content filter, and we all know how futile but irritating those are. This is such a damaging idea that it brings sabotage to mind.”

Since the several assumptions made by Reddit users, Luke openly apologized for making such changes without bringing it to light and

“ensuring everyone receiving it is well-aware.” He also added that he would “put more effort into ensuring future patches are clearly disclosed upfront.”

With all this problem behind us, Luke has recently tried to take control of the Gentoo client again, in which he addressed the benefits of Bitcoin Knots, and Core as being Gentoo’s default through his Github.

Unfortunately, it seems that Luke is still hiding some matters from the public, as he said that there was another particular reason for changing the USE=-knots to core’s, but he said it “cannot be discussed publicly”. In response to Luke’s Github post, a user tagged @blueness, in what seems like a plea to “take full ownership of bitcoin* […] And keep the ebuilds neutral/conservative as possible. Bitcoin Knots should be a separated package.”

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