Open Source

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In an article published in Coin Center, research director Peter Van Valkenburgh describes that open source software is collaboratively produced, shared freely, published transparently, and developed to be a community good rather than the property or business of a single company or person. Peter reminds that when a project is developed open source there isn’t a single chokepoint in the development process, no company or individual that makes, owns, and sells the software. Just as there is no single company that powers the Bitcoin network, neither is there one company that makes the software that, when run on internet connected computers, creates that network. This decentralization in technology production has several profound benefits and can be difficult to grasp for those not familiar with software development.[1]

Coin Center research director continues: Linux is probably the largest and most important example of the open source model, but several others exist. Among them are all of the major cryptocurrencies and open blockchain projects. In his October 2017 article he pointed that the Bitcoin Core reference client was the product of over 15,000 unique code contributions from over 450 unaffiliated individual developers. The software is available for free use and modification under the permissive MIT copyright license, and the full history of that development is visible within a public software repository hosted by Github, a cloud-services provider that allows anyone to sign-up for an account, upload new code, and track changes.[1]

Peter also mentioned that the Ethereum project was currently made up of at least 121 separate software repositories each focusing on different aspects of the project (e.g. programming languages for writing smart contracts, end-user graphical browsers for interacting with the Ethereum network, and compatible clients for participating in the network). There were no fewer than eight software projects to develop Ethereum compatible clients and the more popular clients (go-ethereum and Parity) have hundreds of independent developers contributing to the code. The Ethereum project’s code (and the complete history of that code) is, like Bitcoin’s, publicly available within Github and other online repositories, and all code is released under the LGPL-3, a viral copyleft license that requires all future derivative works to be released under the same non-proprietary licensing.[1]

Definition of Open Source

Open-source software (OSS) is computer software with its source code made available with a license in which the copyright holder provides the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative public manner.[2]

Why is Open Source Important

Blockchains are designed as a trustless system. If the code that runs the blockchain is not Open Source then it requires those utilizing the blockchain to trust that the code is doing what it is described to do. To avoid the problem of trust, blockchains are encouraged to be Open Source. This allows those utilizing the blockchain to know exactly how the blockchain functions without the need for trust, and hence it is a 'trustless' system.


References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 What is “open source” and why is it important for cryptocurrency and open blockchain projects? Written by Peter Van Valkenburgh on Coin Center and published in October 17, 2017
  2. ↑ Open-source software Article on Wikipedia, retrieved in February 20, 2018

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