Value preserving license for community funded work

Hub Proposals Signaling/Text
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Earlier today I was having a conversation about funding the work of informal and hypha.

I am broadly but not unconditionally supportive of this move. Both informal and hypha have done great things for the hub and I’ll just give a couple of examples:

  • informal
    • ICS
  • hypha
    • white glove service for consumer chain onboarding

Additionally, both teams have been helpful to Notional in security research.

I have some questions, too:

  • funding split between orgs
  • Current team sizes
  • Metrics

…but I’m of the opinion that these will be sorted out with time.

Some have commented that interchain.io should be funding this work, and personally I am conflicted, mainly because what the hub funds for the hub, the hub can own, and keep unique, or choose to receive recurring revenue from other chains on.

I would however like to comment that interchain.io should offer more visibility into their internal processes and funding, because this would allow the community to better understand what is going on and where they can contribute. I think that transparency at the ICF would go a long way to reducing the presence of conspiracy theories in the ecosystem. The opacity breeds distrust.

Additionally, I need to say that there is sentiment in the community that the foundation should be completely dedicated to the development of the hub, and that there’s probably a worthy conversation to be had there, although my base instinct is that I disagree.

Cosmos Hub Public License

The cosmos hub public license is a rendition of the MIT license that contains several additional clauses called riders. Economically speaking the most compelling aspect of atomic IBC is the fact that it would be unique to the cosmos hub. So in the course of my conversations, I pulled out a suggestion that I originally made to the kujira blockchain community, specifically a customized license that ensures that code can be audited without permitting reuse when governance does not want code to be reused.

Here is my attempt at that:

ATOMIC IBC

Copyright 2023 @cosmoshub

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:

  • Licensing of this software is controlled by @cosmoshub governance.

  • Replicated security consumers are granted an automatic perpetual license to use Atomic IBC.

  • Other communities are free to apply for a license from Cosmos hub governance.

  • This software is not gratis, it was funded by the Cosmos hub community.

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.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your opinions on this.

Vote YES to apply the cosmos hub public license any time the cosmos hub funds software development
Vote NO to take no action
Vote ABSTAIN to take no strong position on the matter
Vote VETO to cause the deposit to be lost on this proposal, if a 1/3rd veto threshold is met

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The MIT has a very clear and immutable condition, which is

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

Replacing that with a set of vaguely defined rules created massive uncertainty for users.

Condition one:

  • How do you define what the Cosmos Hub is?
  • Who’s the Hub when the blockchain forks?
  • Where can I find the decisions of the referenced governance?
  • How do I know if the license is provided to me or a business?
  • Can the governance withdraw a license later on?

But is this a condition? How can I as user ensure this condition is met to know if I can use the software?

Condition two:

  • Seems like Replicated security consumers get a license that Cosmos Hub users have not received yet.
  • “perpetual” means also when they are not a replicated security customer anymore, right?

Not a condition though.

Condition three:
Sure, kinda implied by 1. But this is not a condition.

Condition four:
Not a condition either. Licenses typically do not care how software comes into existence but how it can be distributed. So that’s probably out of scope.

I’m not a lawyer for sure, but this creates sufficient legal uncertainty for everyone to stay away from such software. There are good reasons to use welll established software licenses throughout the stack that each stakeholder can easily evaluate.

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I think a much better way for the Hub or other blockchains to protect their IP is write software that is just useless or hard to integrate for others. When you write an application instead of a library, when you write specific instead of generic solutions, when you skip all the prettify APIs and convenient integration docs work, you end up with software that is protected quite well.

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