This was supposed to be published along with the 2.0 announcement... but due to a desire for perfection it was not published. I think it is good enough to give you all an idea of how we are thinking and what we are attempting to achieve. I apologize for any confusion.
BitShares is first and foremost a protocol based upon a public ledger. Anyone may provide and distribute an alternative implementation of the protocol and use the protocol for any other blockchain. The Graphene Toolkit produced by Cryptonomex, Inc is only one possible implementation of the protocol.
The Graphene Toolkit will be licensed by Cryptonomex, Inc for use with the BitShares (BTS) blockchain. The terms of the license will allow the Graphene Toolkit and any derivatives thereof to be used with the BitShares blockchain without any restrictions. Cryptonomex, Inc retains all rights to the Graphene Toolkit and any derivatives thereof for any other use. The BitShares blockchain is defined as exactly one global ledger. In the event of a hard-fork only one branch may be considered the official BitShares ledger which will be unambiguously decided as the fork with the highest market capitalization.
This means that from the perspective of BitShares, the Graphene Toolkit is fully open source and its use, distribution, and future cannot be dictated by Cryptonomex or any other entity.
All of the devs are committed to making sure that BitShares is free from the control of any company or person.
BTS will be at complete mercy of Cryptonomex, partialy or completely funding the developement of
Graphene, but whenever Cryptonomex will see it more profitable, it can launch any number
of compteting chains and kill or criple BTS ( imagine if tomorrow Cryptonomex gets 50mil funding offer
to launch competing blockchain ). So it is a WIN-WIN for Cryptonomex but very uncertain future for
BTS chain. Who is going to invest in BTS in such circumstances ?
I'd prefer to invest in Cryptonomex because they hold all the cards now if that would be possible.
BTS owners should have a stake in the IP ownership of the code too.
There should be some social consensus about it. For example there should be a rule that
whenever a private chain is launched based on Graphene, the owners of the private chain should
burn X amout of BTS to get the licensing. For a publicly launched chain, they shoud airdrop
X% amount on BTS shareholders.
Just my few bitshares.