Co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, now favors a copyleft license for the crypto industry after being a fan of permissive licenses for open-source software for a long time. In his blog post, Buterin stated that “two world events and one philosophical shift” had him think otherwise. The first world event that changed his mind was open-source software becoming mainstream, and with big brands like Google and Microsoft using these, nudging industries toward it has become more practical.
Secondly, as the crypto space has become more ‘competitive and mercenary, the copyleft license should be implemented as “we are less able than before to count on people open-sourcing their work purely out of niceness”. He says the “argument for open source cannot just rely on ‘please’; it must also be accompanied by the ‘hard power’ of giving access to some code only to those who open up theirs.”
Thirdly, Glen Weyl’s economic argument convinced him to vouch for the copyleft license. This philosophy, in its simplest form, prioritizes what the community truly wants, not just what the richest want.
So what’s the difference between a permissive and a copyleft license?
Once content is made and published with a permissive license, anyone can take it, use it, and redistribute it for any purpose with no restrictions, or maybe with minimal rules requiring attribution. The copyleft license is no different as it also gives the user the same level of freedom, where anyone can take it and use it, and redistribute copies with no restrictions. However, once it is modified and there is a new derivative, then that new derivative should also be registered under the same copy-left license.
