Make Software, Not Forks - The Daily Gwei #403
Protecting the spirit of open source.
Open source software - it is the lifeblood of both the crypto and non-crypto industries and we all use it every single day (whether we’re aware of it or not). Though in crypto open source is a little bit different because there is usually a token associated with some piece of code - this leads to a different set of incentives and some different dynamics such as forking.
I really do commend Matter Labs on their approach here to remaining full open source with no restrictive licenses. This means that zkSync can become truly community-owned but the obvious downside is that anyone can fork it, slap a new token on it, and make a little (or a lot) of money off of Matter Labs’ work. We’ve seen this play out plenty of times with things like Uniswap v2 forks which then led to Uniswap Labs slapping a license on Uniswap v3 so that it couldn’t just be forked ad infinitum.
When it comes to open source software, there is an important distinction to be made about the “spirit” of open source. What I mean by this is that just because something is open source, doesn’t mean that it justifies ripping off someone else’s work and profiting from it. What it really means is that the software exists in the public domain so that it can be improved upon by anyone in the world without the need to obtain complicated licenses or sign NDA’s or whatever else - and the positive thing is that this has led to a lot of cool innovations in software over the years. But it becomes very negative when someone’s open source work ends up being forked and monetized by someone else with little (if anything) going to the original creator.
I don’t personally have a strong opinion on this topic but what I do have a strong opinion on is that I think forks of existing popular projects will almost always fail over the long run. This is because a project is so much more than just its code - it is the community, the developers, the network effect and more. I mean, we need only look at previous forks that failed to get real traction such as Ethereum Classic and Bitcoin Cash to see proof of this. Though of course in both of these cases people were still able to make money from these forks in some way - so if that was the goal then they succeeded.
I don’t expect people to stop forking projects and slapping tokens on them - in fact I expect this to accelerate - but it’s pretty much at a point now where people are able to tell what’s a blatant money-grab versus an honest attempt at making something worthwhile. I personally hope to see more honest forks play out because when they’re done right they can actually be beneficial to the forked project in various ways.
Have a great day everyone,
Anthony Sassano
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All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice.
Well said. By the way you have a great weekly column. Succinct and well written.