I was speaking figuratively.

I dont see how this prevents anyone from creating a better implementation. Isnt that what open source is about?

Just release the god damn bug fix instead of sitting here?

I was probably a member of the open source community before you were born.
I'm not freaking out.
These are legitimate questions when you're dealing with a project controlling the equivalent of over .5M Euro and aspiring for billions.
A handful of active developers can be corrupted.
These dodging answers are not encouraging me to think that this hasn't already happened.

I was starting this investigation to decide whether to invest big money in bitcoin.
Fat chance.

You could appeal to the developers who plan to lock in the other chain. If it's due to a bug or other mistake, they will naturally fix the problem. However, if it's due to evil intent, see your next question.

There's not (yet) a law relating to the lock-in of chains, so I doubt the police will be interested (or even understanding).

You can report the problem here, and you could report it to the blogosphere if you like.

Anyone who shares your interest in a valid block chain will be motivated to make the effort, and those who are technically able to do so will be happy to look into your claims provided they are expressed in such a way that people are motivated to take them seriously.

It's in your interests to explain the problem clearly, and it's in other people's interests to take your report seriously (because their bitcoin balance depends on a valid block chain too).

Someone will release a version of the client software that works properly, which you and others will use. It's of no consequence to you if there are still some people who choose to use the "corrupt" version of Bitcoin, because you are free to use the version with the correct block chain.

No problem. We will welcome you back when you are ready.

Then you'll understand how it works, and you'll understand why you don't report bugs to the police, and you'll understand that sourceforge is a tool and not a central authority.

Im not dodging anything. Im  not a developer so I told you where you can talk to the devs on irc. They can more easily answer your questions.

I think the main problem is that currently we have a single client that can be used. This puts a lot of trust in the developers of this client. So what I think tentative is alluding to is the possibility that the developers may become greedy and release a modified version of the client that plays unfair and gives them a certain advantage. The problem with proving this is that users are not forced to update to the latest version if they do not trust the developers, in fact (except for bug fixes) people could run their current client endlessly, since the protocol itself seems to have solid foundations.

As soon as we have multiple implementations the trust that we have to put into the developers of any of those clients is reduced, but sincerely I don't see satoshi turn evil anytime soon

tentative: I don't get it.

You seem to be saying that somebody might be secretly working on a longer block chain, and all their hard work will be ruined because they won't be able to replace the block chain everybody else is using non-secretly because the block chain everybody else is using might get locked in.   Ummm... yeah!  Don't work on longer block chains in secret.

Either that, or you're saying Satoshi might accidently lock in a shorter block chain, and most people either not noticing or not caring.  Umm... no, I don't see that happening.

The block chain lock-in check is only done when new blocks are accepted.  Here is what would happen if Satoshi tried to commit a block lock-in that most of the network thought was shorter:

1. Imagine everybody downloads the new client with the bad lock-in.
2. Everybody who had the longer chain before ignores the lock-in, and continues to push the longer chain.
  (unless the longer chain contains a bad transaction-- the chain is checked for bad transactions on startup, see  CBlock::CheckBlock)
3. Newbies who are downloading the chain for the first time will hit the lock-in code, and will be running with a shorter chain.

There will be chaos as newbies generate blocks on the shorter chain, which only other newbies will accept.  "oldies" will also continue to generate on the longer chain.  Transactions will get added to both chains... and the "oldies" will beat Satoshi into submission.  Unless there is a legitimate bug (like the overflow bug that inspired the block chain lock-in code in the first place).

If I am misunderstanding your concerns, please speak up.  The number one development priority for bitcoin is security.  If you have found a problem, please email or private-message Satoshi, or post here (besides possible network denial-of-service attacks-- only email about those if you have a brilliant idea for how to prevent them...).

EDIT : Fixing = reverting some of satoshi's code, for some reason I don't see that happening
Also, no one actually answered as to why there was a block chain lockdown hardcoded, it doesn't solve anything, not even CPU overpowering attack on the network.