Conflation and Confusion - Licensing is Not the Same as Closed Source

[yiminh]

There has been much talk about whether or not a “crypto-currency” that uses a licensed software is in agreement with the principals of voluntarism, libertarianism, anarchism, etc. I would like to make the bold assertion that it is very much aligned with many of the key ideals espoused by such philosophies. In spirit, though often not in practice (due to a convoluted legal framework), a “license” simply implies that the creators of said software should be entitled to lawfully claim the fruits of their labor.

I am certainly not in favor of the modern legal framework for copyrights and patents and we all know that they are now being used to justify fraud, extortion, and many other de-facto legal (but not lawful) practices. However, BM has stated that their intent for claiming a “license” over the Graphene toolkit is to satisfy the needs of potential VC investors rather than to serve the purpose of allowing Cryptonomix to file suit against offenders. So I ask, why is this such a threat to our “philosopical foundations”, as some have suggested?

Furthermore, since all the code is open-source and therefore completely transparent for auditing, any actual threat of a small group gaining undue influence over a particular technology is marginalized by the ease of hard-forking the code. Of course you might say “but it is now illegal to hard fork the code”, to which I would reply, “the license only applies to C++,” or if I was feeling facetious, “have you ever tried to arrest a blockchain”. The truth is it would require, very conservatively, far less than a million dollars, 3-4 months and perhaps a room full of professional programmers to deconstruct and re-assemble the entire Graphene toolkit into another language. Based on this fact alone, I think we have enough evidence to motion the court to dismiss any notions of monopoly, evil empire building, federal reserve 2.0, or whatever other nonsense is currently being leveled against the Cryptonomix crew.

I would like to, instead, express my gratitude for the hard work by our devs that are offering us a number of features that hold the potential for a truly massive social, political, economic and philosophical revolution. I feel lucky in fact that we are being given freely, or rather at a very reasonable price (average $400/month BTS dilution per dev) this vastly superior toolkit to the current BTS. I even wonder if this license arrangement might serve to benefit our community by acting as a (albeit short) temporal barrier to large wealthy interests who are tempted to carbon copy our toolkit and use their vast financial and human resources to gain advantages in this still burgeoning space. Whatever the case, I think we would actually betray many of principals we claim to uphold if we were to somehow denounce the notion that Cryptonomix should retain whatever rights they choose to their own creation.

Are you saying BM is trying to cheat the VCs out of their money like he did to ours? good luck!

[CryptoPrometheus]

There has been much talk about whether or not a “crypto-currency” that uses a licensed software is in agreement with the principals of voluntarism, libertarianism, anarchism, etc. I would like to make the bold assertion that it is very much aligned with many of the key ideals espoused by such philosophies. In spirit, though often not in practice (due to a convoluted legal framework), a “license” simply implies that the creators of said software should be entitled to lawfully claim the fruits of their labor.

I am certainly not in favor of the modern legal framework for copyrights and patents and we all know that they are now being used to justify fraud, extortion, and many other de-facto legal (but not lawful) practices. However, BM has stated that their intent for claiming a “license” over the Graphene toolkit is to satisfy the needs of potential VC investors rather than to serve the purpose of allowing Cryptonomix to file suit against offenders. So I ask, why is this such a threat to our “philosopical foundations”, as some have suggested?

Furthermore, since all the code is open-source and therefore completely transparent for auditing, any actual threat of a small group gaining undue influence over a particular technology is marginalized by the ease of hard-forking the code. Of course you might say “but it is now illegal to hard fork the code”, to which I would reply, “the license only applies to C++,” or if I was feeling facetious, “have you ever tried to arrest a blockchain”. The truth is it would require, very conservatively, far less than a million dollars, 3-4 months and perhaps a room full of professional programmers to deconstruct and re-assemble the entire Graphene toolkit into another language. Based on this fact alone, I think we have enough evidence to motion the court to dismiss any notions of monopoly, evil empire building, federal reserve 2.0, or whatever other nonsense is currently being leveled against the Cryptonomix crew.

I would like to, instead, express my gratitude for the hard work by our devs that are offering us a number of features that hold the potential for a truly massive social, political, economic and philosophical revolution. I feel lucky in fact that we are being given freely, or rather at a very reasonable price (average $400/month BTS dilution per dev) this vastly superior toolkit to the current BTS. I even wonder if this license arrangement might serve to benefit our community by acting as a (albeit short) temporal barrier to large wealthy interests who are tempted to carbon copy our toolkit and use their vast financial and human resources to gain advantages in this still burgeoning space. Whatever the case, I think we would actually betray many of principals we claim to uphold if we were to somehow denounce the notion that Cryptonomix should retain whatever rights they choose to their own creation.

EDIT: I want to add, I am also very grateful for the frank and open discussion that takes place on these forums. My intent is not to trample anyone's right to have an opinion, but rather to present an alternative viewpoint with the hope of bringing some clarity to a few "big picture" items