On the heise.de forums, someone commented on an article on the DAO trainwreck with the simple brocard pacta sunt servanda!

I replied by quoting from the "Bürgerliche Gesetzbuch" ("Civil Code"?), § 133:

When a declaration of intent [contract] is interpreted, the true intention is to be ascertained rather than adhering to the literal meaning of the declaration.

So the problem is much older than smart contracts, and even a bureaucratic, complicated and technically precise law system as that of Germany insists that code is not law - the true intention it expresses is what matters when arbitrating.

I have no business with Ethereum, and have not followed the whole debate, and I take no sides.

So it seems to me that from a "code is law" perspective of trust, those who insisted that the code be followed and the chain not be hardforked to bail out everyone, were completely right. From now on, it must always be feared that a smart contract will be nullified when sufficiently many and sufficiently powerful players decide half-way in they do not like the outcome.

The community should have learned their lessons and make sure to write less stupid smart contracts from then on and continued on the way of the Classic fork.

I imagine it is quite hard to de-bug a smart contract before it goes live or to anticipate all exceptions, so leaving the role of judge, jury and executioner to a machine (Garbage in - Gospel out) does not seem a good idea at all. It can only serve as a tool to ascertain whether the parameters are right and the conditions are met; the final decisionmaking should still be with accountable beings with heart and brain.