This stems from two major industry changes and a philosophical shift.
Written by: Vitalik Buterin
Translated by: Saoirse, Foresight News
In the field of free and open-source software (and more broadly, free content), copyright licenses are primarily divided into two categories:
If content is released under permissive licenses (such as CC0, MIT), anyone can access, use, and redistribute the content without restriction, as long as they comply with the minimum requirement of attribution;
If content is released under copyleft licenses (such as CC-BY-SA, GPL), anyone can also access, use, and redistribute copies without restriction, but if they create and distribute derivative works by modifying or combining with other works, the new works must be released under the same license. Additionally, the GPL requires any derivative works to disclose their source code and meet several other requirements.
In summary: permissive licenses allow free sharing with everyone, while copyleft licenses share only with those who are also willing to share freely.
Since I was a child, I have been a fan and developer of free and open-source software and free content, passionate about building things I believe are useful to others. In the past, I preferred permissive licensing models (for example, my blog uses the WTFPL license), but recently I have gradually shifted towards supporting copyleft models. This article will explain the reasons for this shift.
WTFPL advocates a concept of software freedom, but it is not the only paradigm.
Why I once favored permissive licenses
First, I want to maximize the adoption rate and dissemination scope of my works, and permissive licenses explicitly state that anyone creating based on my work does not need to worry about any restrictions, which conveniently provides for this. Companies are often unwilling to open source projects for free, and I know I cannot push them fully into the free software camp, so I hope to avoid unnecessary conflicts with their established and unwilling-to-give-up models.
Secondly, from a philosophical level, I generally dislike copyright (and patents). I do not agree with the view that two people sharing data fragments privately can be seen as a crime against a third party. They have neither touched nor interacted with any third party, nor have they deprived any of their rights (note that 'not paying' is different from 'stealing'). Considering various legal factors, clearly releasing works into the public domain is operationally quite complex. Permissive licenses are the purest and safest way to approach a state of 'not claiming copyright'.
I truly appreciate the idea of copyleft 'using copyright to regulate copyright'; I think it's a clever legal insight. In a sense, it resonates with the liberalism I admire on a philosophical level. As a political philosophy, liberalism is often interpreted as: prohibiting any use of violence except to protect people from violent harm. As a social philosophical idea, I often see it as a way to tame the harmful reflex of human aversion, elevating freedom itself to a sacred status, making actions that tarnish freedom repulsive; even if you find others' voluntary unconventional relationships uncomfortable, you cannot pursue them because interfering in the private lives of free individuals is itself detestable. Therefore, in principle, there are plenty of historical precedents to prove that aversion to copyright and the practice of 'using copyright to regulate copyright' can coexist.
However, despite the fact that the copyleft of textual works fits this definition, GPL-style code copyright has transcended the minimalist concept of 'using copyright to regulate copyright': it uses copyright for the aggressive purpose of 'forcing the publication of source code'. While this is done for the public interest rather than the private interest of seeking licensing fees, it still constitutes an aggressive use of copyright. This situation is even more pronounced for stricter licenses like AGPL: even if derivative works are only provided through software as a service (SaaS) and never made public, they are still required to publish their source code.
Different types of software licenses set different conditions for sharing the source code of derivative works. Some licenses require source code to be disclosed in a wide range of scenarios.
Why is copyleft favored more today?
My shift from favoring permissive licenses to supporting copyleft stems from two major industry changes and a philosophical shift.
First of all, open source has become mainstream, making it more feasible for companies to embrace it. Nowadays, numerous companies in various industries are embracing open source: tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Huawei not only accept open source but also lead the development of open-source software; emerging fields like artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies rely on open source more than any previous industry.
Secondly, competition in the cryptocurrency field is becoming increasingly fierce and profit-driven, and we can no longer simply rely on people to open source out of goodwill. Therefore, promoting open source cannot rely solely on moral appeals (such as 'please open source your code'), but also needs to utilize the 'hard constraints' of copyleft, opening code access only to developers who are also open source.
To visually present how these two forces enhance the relative value of copyleft, it roughly looks like this:
In situations that are neither completely unrealistic nor necessarily feasible, the value of incentivizing open source is most significant. Today, both mainstream enterprise sectors and the cryptocurrency industry are in this state, greatly enhancing the value of incentivizing open source through copyleft.
(Note: The horizontal axis represents the motivation level to turn to open source, while the vertical axis represents the probability of being open source. A comparison of the two charts shows that the motivation and effect of promoting open source through copyleft in mainstream sectors today are more easily synergistic, whereas in the cryptocurrency field, due to ecological maturity, the marginal benefits of promotion are diminishing, reflecting that the value logic of copyleft incentivizing open source changes with industry development.)
Thirdly, Glen Weyl's economic theory convinces me: in the presence of super-linear scale returns, optimal policies are not strictly property rights systems like those of Rothbard/Mises. On the contrary, optimal policies indeed require a certain degree of active promotion of projects, making them more open than in their original state.
Fundamentally, if we assume the existence of economies of scale, simple mathematical reasoning reveals that a non-zero degree of openness is the only way to avoid the world ultimately being controlled by a single entity. Economies of scale mean that if the resources I have are twice yours, my progress will exceed twice yours. Thus, by next year, my resources might become 2.02 times yours, and so on...
Left chart: Proportional growth model, where slight differences in the initial stage ultimately maintain a small gap; right chart: Economies of scale growth model, where slight differences in the initial stage evolve into a huge gap over time.
From a historical perspective, the key factor in curbing this uncontrolled trend of imbalance is: humanity cannot escape the diffusion effect of progress. Talent carries ideas and skills when it flows between enterprises and states; poorer countries can achieve catch-up growth through trade with richer countries; industrial espionage is common, making it difficult for innovation to be absolutely monopolized.
However, in recent years, multiple trends are threatening this balance while weakening the traditional factors that curb imbalance growth:
Technological progress is accelerating at a super-exponential rate, with the speed of innovation and iteration far surpassing the past;
The internal and international political instability within countries has intensified: if the rights protection mechanism is sound, the rise of others does not pose a direct threat; however, in an environment where coercive actions are more likely to occur and difficult to predict, the excessive dominance of a particular entity can become a substantive risk. At the same time, governments around the world are less willing to regulate monopolies than before;
Modern software and hardware products possess the ability to be closed: traditional product delivery necessarily accompanies technical transparency (such as reverse engineering), but now closed-source products can only open usage rights while retaining modification and control rights;
The natural limits of economies of scale have been weakened: historically, large organizations were constrained by high management costs and difficulties in meeting localization demands, while digital technology has made ultra-large-scale control systems possible.
The above changes have intensified the ongoing and even self-reinforcing power imbalance between enterprises and states.
Therefore, I increasingly recognize the need to actively incentivize or force technological diffusion through stronger measures.
Recent government policies in various countries can be seen as mandatory interventions in technological diffusion:
EU standardization directives (such as the latest mandatory USB-C interface) aim to dismantle closed ecosystems that are incompatible with other technologies;
China's forced technology transfer rules;
The United States bans non-compete agreements (I support this policy because it forces companies to achieve 'partial openness' of implicit knowledge through the flow of talent, although confidentiality agreements exist, they are often full of loopholes in practice).
In my view, the drawbacks of such policies often stem from the nature of their government-mandated policies, leading them to prioritize incentivizing types of dissemination that are strongly inclined toward local political and business interests. However, the advantage of such policies is that they can indeed encourage a higher level of technological dissemination.
Copyleft constructs a vast pool of code (or other creative works) resources, which can only be legally used when users are willing to share the source code of the content developed based on these resources. Therefore, copyleft can be seen as a highly universal and neutral technological diffusion incentive mechanism that can reap the positive effects of the above policies while avoiding many of their drawbacks. This is because copyleft does not favor any specific entity and does not require a central planner to actively set parameters.
These views are not absolute. In scenarios of 'maximizing dissemination', permissive licenses still hold value. But overall, the cumulative benefits of copyleft have far exceeded those of 15 years ago. Projects that chose permissive licenses back then should at least consider shifting to copyleft today.
Unfortunately, the meaning represented by this 'open source' symbol has become entirely unrelated to its original intent. However, in the future, we may have open-source cars, and copyleft hardware may help realize this vision.
