Abandoned: Come to a decision on the use of Value Preserving Licenses

Hub Proposals Signaling/Text
1

Change log

  • 2024-06-26 Created initial post
  • 2024-07-03 Abandoned due to slash risk and Notional’s inability to access its atoms due to refusals to sign multi-signature transactions by notional shareholders.

Summary

The Cosmos Hub exists in a competitive global environment. Ultimately it was very healthy for the Hub and its sovereignty to begin to fund development work for the Hub, directly from the hubs community pool.

If approved, this proposal would mandate the use of a different license for hub funded software. The license would allow potential users of hub funded software to make a proposal to governance, and for the community to choose whether or not proposals are accepted.

Details

Summary

Current State (If stakeholders vote NO)

The goal of this proposal is to provide clarity on licensure. The user community is beginning to develop some sad feelings on the use of ICS for Ethos. The current state of affairs is extremely clear:

  • ICS is apache 2.0 licensed and our choice of apache 2.0 signals that anyone is fully free to use ICS (hub funded software) in any way they wish to, including in fully proprietary reimplementations.

There is no ambiguity there, so if the proposal is rejected, we remain in an unambiguous state and the community can/should feel happy that The usage of hub-funded software is expanding.

A vote of “no” will thus not change anything and the situation will remain clear, with the additional clarity of stakeholder approval of the current situation.

Future State (If stakeholders vote YES)

If a vote of YES results from this proposal, then the cosmos hub should adopt an MIT license with specialized riders to be used on all hub funded repositories.

Copyright 2024 Cosmos Hub Contributors

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

* Use of this software in a production Blockchain network is subject to the approval of cosmos hub governance. 
  * If you would like to use software from this repository in a production Blockchain environment other than the cosmos hub, please make a post in the governance section of https://forum.cosmos.network
  * Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work, where such license applies only to those patent claims licensable by such Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their Contribution(s) alone or by combination of their Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s) was submitted. If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
 * Individual contributors to cosmos hub software as recorded in its git commit log are allowed to enforce this license legally. 

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Comparison of Paths

no

If this proposal is not approved, Hub software will remain Apache 2.0 license, and any team, individual or blockchain may use it without restriction. Use of hub-funded software by other chains should therefore be celebrated, because software with a wider user base gets more attention and contribution.

yes

If this proposal is approved, the Hub will be able to realize streams of value from its software. This could include streaming payments from users of hub funded software that are distributed to stakeholders using the distribution module, payments to the community pool, and strategic alliances, but surely is not limited to these options.

If this proposal is approved, use of hub funded software by other chains should be celebrated because it means that the community has found specific alignment with the new users of the hub funded software.

theory (authors opinion)

Experience over decades has shown that software that gets used is better maintained and ultimately of better quality.

Whether the vote on this proposal is yes or no, use of hub funded software by other communities, teams and blockchains should be encouraged.

Additional users may:

  • Find and eliminate defects in software
  • Develop new economic techniques around for the use of the software
  • Contribute new features
  • Collaborate on feature timelines and prioritization

Hopefully, it is clear that this proposal is not intended to block growth in the use of hub-funded software. Usage growth is good. The proposal instead is a decision between:

  • (If NO) Acknowledging our current license and affirming it as a community
  • (If YES) Adopting licenses that allow the hub to selectively license the software that its community has funded.

Forum post link

Target on chain date

July 4, 2024

IPFS link

Governance votes

The following items summarize the voting options and what it means for this proposal:

YES - adopt a Value Preserving License for software funded by the hub community pool
NO - no change (all repositories will continue to be apache 2.0 licensed)
NO WITH VETO - A ‘NoWithVeto’ vote indicates a proposal either (1) is deemed to be spam, i.e., irrelevant to Cosmos Hub, (2) disproportionately infringes on minority interests, or (3) violates or encourages violation of the rules of engagement as currently set out by Cosmos Hub governance. If the number of ‘NoWithVeto’ votes is greater than a third of total votes, the proposal is rejected and the deposits are burned.
ABSTAIN - You wish to contribute to quorum but you formally decline to vote either for or against the proposal.

1 Like
2

Yes. That’s what I would vote.

1 Like
3

Thanks for being the only respondent!

Should this be out to vote ?

4

I support this. We’ve been working on a license actually. I’m not totally happy with it yet which is why I haven’t posted it here. Ours uses some stuff from the BSL and the Apache licenses so it is a bit wordier than yours but the intention and mechanism is the same. What do you think?

COSMOS HUB SOFTWARE LICENSE

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2 Likes
5

It’s really not what I would have gone with (due to verbosity)

…but I see license-by-governance in there so I’m good with it.

What parts aren’t you satisfied with?

Part of the reason that I used MIT, is that that the license is boilerplate and you don’t need to recreate the wheel.

6

It is just kind of hard to read and understand IMO, but I am not a lawyer. We will come out with either some simplifications for the language or a guide on how it works for non-lawyers, and then post a prop to use this license soon.