I was wondering, why the devs chose the MIT license. With the MIT lisence companies are allowed to use the source code for their own products and distribute it as closed source for commercial purposes.
While NCC is open source, the NIS software is not open source yet. As I understood it, it will be open source with the release of v1 (when the BETA phase is finished [that is not = launch]). The reason for this (as I understood it) is the fear of people who take the code, pay a bunch of professional coders, do some big marketing/PR and overtake the original project (NEM). But these "people" would only do it if they can make money with the software, and that is only possible on one single condition:
- They sell their closed-source software.
Maybe I am missing something, please tell me.
If not, why don't you just use GPL license? GPL does now allow a commercial usage of the code as closed source. It can only stay open source.
NCC is MIT licensed, there have been nothing said about NIS
Ok, I thought it will be on the same license.
So what do you think about GPL and open source at launch?
it's not closed source that bothers us, but dumb "forks" that could harm nem reputation, and "borrowing" from our code base.
If we'll wait till V1 we should be competitive enough, so that even borrowing won't harm nem in any way.
If someone is motivated enough there's always decompilation, and there are (were?) people here and on IRC, that have tried it, even with some success.
Also I doubt anyone would go to court over it.
I always thought the only reason for the delayed open source is the threat of an entity with a lot of money which is able to overtake NEM just because of more financialpower (more programmers, better marketing/PR).
I don't understand how anybody could harm NEM with a dumb fork project. That is only possible if some substantial, basic problem(s) exist(s) in the NEM source code or there were severe mistakes in the way NEM started as a project (e.g. stake distribution etc.). NEM was initiated by utopianfuture as a NXT fork, that could have worked (although it was decided early to discard that idea and start a new code from scratch), but only because NXT had some basic problems (examples: distribution at start to only 7x people, motivation to hoard coins). As I don't see this with NEM, what are you afraid of?
Btw: I am not trying to start a troll discussion about the old open source topic here, I think you me good enough now. I just want to understand your reasons.
I think there's nothing wrong with the MIT license, and I have no problem with people using NEM in closed source, commercial software.
I think the NEM community needs to be a certain size before we open source NIS. If we have a critical mass of members in our community, then cloning the software will not equate to cloning NEM, as they will not be able to clone our community as well. We aren't there yet, though.
I think there's nothing wrong with the MIT license, and I have no problem with people using NEM in closed source, commercial software.
I think the NEM community needs to be a certain size before we open source NIS. If we have a critical mass of members in our community, then cloning the software will not equate to cloning NEM, as they will not be able to clone our community as well. We aren't there yet, though.
Yes, the most important reason is the community behind NEM. Until we have a respectable community base, the code should not be open sourced. Not until Asset exchange I think. After that if anybody makes any clones, it'll be free advertisement for NEM basically.