Who are the key developers, and where can I follow their progress and decision making?

I want to follow the most up to date developments of Bitcoin, (such as M of N transaction confirmation).

Who are the primary developers of Bitcoin and what is the most efficient way to track the progress of this and similar activities?

I'm interested in reading either a detailed activity view, or a high level bullet point of key developments. Ideally someone would offer both information formats as an answer.

A nice summary view would include the following ideas and a status on testnet and on the production network:

goodguys_activate

Posted 2012-12-06T07:46:26.373

Reputation: 11 898

Answers

The core developers are listed on the main Bitcoin page, while everyone that contributed code are listed on the About page. Probably the most up-to-date info on what is happening with the code would be on the GitHub repo.

ThePiachu

Posted 2012-12-06T07:46:26.373

Reputation: 41 594

Discussion on activities can be found on SourceForge mailing list.

– klemen – 2012-12-06T20:17:42.947

And the #bitcoin-dev IRC channel on Freenode. – Stephen Gornick – 2012-12-08T00:16:15.097

The progress is being tracked through the "Bitcoin Improvement Proposal". There is a grid of several new features that may or may not make it into a future version of the client.

Learn about the BIP submission process here

goodguys_activate

Posted 2012-12-06T07:46:26.373

Reputation: 11 898

Improvements local to the reference client (or any client) that don't influence others will typically not be turned into BIPs. – Pieter Wuille – 2012-12-12T09:45:34.817