Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin advocates for 'copyleft' software publishing

Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin has formalized his stance on software publishing and now advocates for slightly more restrictive “copyleft” licenses, according to a new blog on Monday. This is a change from Buterin’s previous support of permissive licenses, which enable developers to use and redistribute code “for any purpose with no restrictions.” 

“If you create and distribute a derivative work by modifying it or combining it with other work, the new work must also be released under the same license,” Buterin said, explaining slightly less permissive “copyleft” licenses like CC-BY-SA and GPL.

While still broadly opposed to copyright, Buterin’s latest position is an attempt at "using copyright against itself" by requiring developers to use a publishing license that ensures derivative works will also remain accessible to the public, he wrote. 

According to Buterin, his latest stance has been shaped by the mainstream adoption of open-source code by companies like Google and Huawei, as well as the increasingly competitive cryptocurrency landscape. 

“The crypto space in particular has become more competitive and mercenary, and we are less able than before to count on people open-sourcing their work purely out of niceness,” Buterin wrote. “Hence, 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.”

Crypto, as an offshoot of the cypherpunk ecosystem, has broadly been supportive of open-source software that enables the free use and remixing of existing codebases. However, it has been a tense issue at times, especially within the NFT sector, where some artists have sought greater protection over their work.