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> git doesn't have a distributed consesus mechanism It doesn't have an automated distributed consensus mechanism. It does have a manual distributed consensus

> git doesn't have a distributed consesus mechanism It doesn't have an automated distributed consensus mechanism. It does have a manual distributed consensus mechanism; that's basically how every popular open source project works. You fork the project, make a change, and if your commit is an improvement over the project you forked people will be inclined to merge it into their repositories, eventually arriving at a consensus. In practice this process is often more centralized than distributed, but it doesn't have to be. If you want to 51% attack a popular repo, all you have to do is make constant, quality improvements to the project over time, and eventually your fork may well become the dominant one even over the objections of any centralized authorities.

dahart 4y ago
The argument that git can have consensus if people just agree to isn’t compelling in this context. The distinction here is that with blockchain, consensus is mandatory and has a specific technical meaning. With git, consensus is optional at best, achieved only manually, is easily broken by rogue activity, and the word consensus might not even mean the same thing and can change over time in the case of git - there are lots of examples of original projects or forks that have claimed to be the one and only place people should concentrate their efforts, only to get abandoned in favor of something else later.