> I didn't know git had a consensus mechanism built into it other than manual resolution of merge conflicts
Git has cryptographic identity baked-in, so people can assert authority over their own contributions. That enabled mailing groups and IRC channels which encouraged discussion before arriving at a consensus and merging relevant files to the master branch. It's not decentralized, but it could just as easily be hosted as a torrent if that was something people cared about. However, decentralized development has historically been a farce, so most people use something like Github to control and moderate their repos. You're right, this is a "to each his own" situation, and there's literally no one on the "hosting Git via BitTorrent" side of the room. Moving to a less-efficient, more-convoluted process does not fix this. I've been following decentralized technology and the likes of Bitcoin for almost a decade, and the successes and failures of the space are self-evident.
> Another big problem area is PKI as well.
To who?
To the scary boogyman white-supremacist KiwiFarms NBC fearmonger types? Yeah, have fun getting anyone to rule in favor of them. To the rest of society, centralized CAs are a boon. Not only are they wicked-fast (good luck querying a blockchain faster than a DNS request), they go out of their way to prevent systemic abuse and domain-squatting in ways that crypto can't. You want to apply PKI to this space? Convince me that it wouldn't start another FTX-like situation, with powerful individual exerting economic power to centralize the market a-la crypto exchanges.
Git has cryptographic identity baked-in, so people can assert authority over their own contributions. That enabled mailing groups and IRC channels which encouraged discussion before arriving at a consensus and merging relevant files to the master branch. It's not decentralized, but it could just as easily be hosted as a torrent if that was something people cared about. However, decentralized development has historically been a farce, so most people use something like Github to control and moderate their repos. You're right, this is a "to each his own" situation, and there's literally no one on the "hosting Git via BitTorrent" side of the room. Moving to a less-efficient, more-convoluted process does not fix this. I've been following decentralized technology and the likes of Bitcoin for almost a decade, and the successes and failures of the space are self-evident.
> Another big problem area is PKI as well.
To who?
To the scary boogyman white-supremacist KiwiFarms NBC fearmonger types? Yeah, have fun getting anyone to rule in favor of them. To the rest of society, centralized CAs are a boon. Not only are they wicked-fast (good luck querying a blockchain faster than a DNS request), they go out of their way to prevent systemic abuse and domain-squatting in ways that crypto can't. You want to apply PKI to this space? Convince me that it wouldn't start another FTX-like situation, with powerful individual exerting economic power to centralize the market a-la crypto exchanges.