Vitalik Buterin advocates ‘copyleft’ licensing in crypto

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin now backs open-source licenses, arguing they better promote open innovation as crypto becomes more “competitive and mercenary.”

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has encouraged the crypto industry to adopt “copyleft” open-source licenses amid concerns the industry is losing touch with its collaborative roots.

In a newly released blog on Monday, Buterin said he was previously a fan of a “permissive approach” to software licensing, which enables the free sharing with everyone, but has now started to favor a “copyleft” approach. 

There is a subtle difference between the two. Permissive licenses allow the public to freely modify or distribute source code files. Copyleft licenses do the same, but require the user to also open-source any derivative work using the original code.

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