I said calling public code open source was newspeak, its true. OS code different than public code, thats it))
no conspiracy between uni and aave sorry, you probably cant read well, i said that legal teams are working in a group together == they have minimum contact == not a surprise to see aave taking the legal path chosen by close peers))))
you talk fascism and conspiracy, make everyone uncomfortable, please come back on track
You already have all the details below, but here is my brief version:
1.Emilio and I connected on Twitter a little while ago, we have never met or spoken before. The way we connected was just fairly standard twitter talk, not about this topic or any specific topic.
He didnât ask for a specific point of view, only that I take a look and comment.
I never promised a specific point of view, or that Iâll even comment, only that I take a look. The topic was interesting so I commented.
I have no connection to AAVEâs legal team, aside from crypto law twitter where Rebecca Rettig once retweeted something I said (she is very highly regarded among twitterâs crypto lawyers). I happen to be from Finland originally, but I moved to the UK about 10 years before AAVE or its previous iterations were a thing (the year Bitcoin was started, actually). I have never met anyone from the AAVE team.
Although, how cool would it be if a 16-year-old Stani Kulechov, his genius big brain fully in Asimovâs Foundation-like gear, handpicked me, a then-18-year-old argumentative smart-arse from a completely different city in Finland to go to the UK and become a lawyer/academic, because he saw (the year before bitcoin no less) that digital assets were going to become big tings in a decade and foretold of the day that would come when my destiny is fulfilled and he would need me to swoop in and single-handedly sway a governance vote on what licence code should be under? Very cool.
But alas, reality.
But yes, licence owner is probably the most pertinent question here.
Regrettably itâs not a very simple question, so Iâll have to mull it over. For reference, the entire crypto law twitter is currently trying to work out how best to make DAOs interact with the legal system in some well-optimised way, and there isnât an easy consensus yet. I think the easiest solution might be for the company to hold the licence(d code) on trust for all holders of the AAVE governance token. Not super difficult to execute, but there are other angles on this that Iâd have to think more about.
Even if I think some of the messages on this thread from new users are a bit strange, close to some weird FUD tactic, I think it is important to insist that in general (me included), people advocating for some type of business license still has as main priority not setting any type of hard constraints for people using the Aave v3 codebase to innovate on top, or even improving it.
The objective is to have a proper definition of rights over a codebase that will be âpropertyâ of the DAO, not to close the ecosystem and start lawsuits everywhere for no reason.
For example, I imagine scenarios like the following:
John Doe - Solo-dev on hackathon
In this example, even if John would not have requested permission from Aave maybe because he was just not aware of that, there should not be any problem for him or his project, potentially with the Aave DAO itself actually marking his project as âwhitelistedâ.
Now, it is on our hands (community) to define the license as precise as possible to not create any type of limits for builders out there trying to innovate.
Hello, following the license discussion, we witnessed a noticeable amount of newly minted user accounts posting similar messages sometimes on unrelated topics.
This governance forum should allow diverse opinions on any topics, discussions can take on the spicy side if they stay respectful. And our job as moderators is not to take sides.
That being said, bots are not welcomed here, a few were banned today, and if others appear they will get the same treatment.
Since the voting has ended and Business License won, here is the content of the license:
Business Source License 1.1
License text copyright (c) 2017 MariaDB Corporation Ab, All Rights Reserved.
"Business Source License" is a trademark of MariaDB Corporation Ab.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Parameters
Licensor: Uniswap Labs
Licensed Work: Uniswap V3 Core
The Licensed Work is (c) 2021 Uniswap Labs
Additional Use Grant: Any uses listed and defined at
v3-core-license-grants.uniswap.eth
Change Date: The earlier of 2023-04-01 or a date specified at
v3-core-license-date.uniswap.eth
Change License: GNU General Public License v2.0 or later
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Terms
The Licensor hereby grants you the right to copy, modify, create derivative
works, redistribute, and make non-production use of the Licensed Work. The
Licensor may make an Additional Use Grant, above, permitting limited
production use.
Effective on the Change Date, or the fourth anniversary of the first publicly
available distribution of a specific version of the Licensed Work under this
License, whichever comes first, the Licensor hereby grants you rights under
the terms of the Change License, and the rights granted in the paragraph
above terminate.
If your use of the Licensed Work does not comply with the requirements
currently in effect as described in this License, you must purchase a
commercial license from the Licensor, its affiliated entities, or authorized
resellers, or you must refrain from using the Licensed Work.
All copies of the original and modified Licensed Work, and derivative works
of the Licensed Work, are subject to this License. This License applies
separately for each version of the Licensed Work and the Change Date may vary
for each version of the Licensed Work released by Licensor.
You must conspicuously display this License on each original or modified copy
of the Licensed Work. If you receive the Licensed Work in original or
modified form from a third party, the terms and conditions set forth in this
License apply to your use of that work.
Any use of the Licensed Work in violation of this License will automatically
terminate your rights under this License for the current and all other
versions of the Licensed Work.
This License does not grant you any right in any trademark or logo of
Licensor or its affiliates (provided that you may use a trademark or logo of
Licensor as expressly required by this License).
TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, THE LICENSED WORK IS PROVIDED ON
AN "AS IS" BASIS. LICENSOR HEREBY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING (WITHOUT LIMITATION) WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND
TITLE.
MariaDB hereby grants you permission to use this Licenseâs text to license
your works, and to refer to it using the trademark "Business Source License",
as long as you comply with the Covenants of Licensor below.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Covenants of Licensor
In consideration of the right to use this Licenseâs text and the "Business
Source License" name and trademark, Licensor covenants to MariaDB, and to all
other recipients of the licensed work to be provided by Licensor:
1. To specify as the Change License the GPL Version 2.0 or any later version,
or a license that is compatible with GPL Version 2.0 or a later version,
where "compatible" means that software provided under the Change License can
be included in a program with software provided under GPL Version 2.0 or a
later version. Licensor may specify additional Change Licenses without
limitation.
2. To either: (a) specify an additional grant of rights to use that does not
impose any additional restriction on the right granted in this License, as
the Additional Use Grant; or (b) insert the text "None".
3. To specify a Change Date.
4. Not to modify this License in any other way.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notice
The Business Source License (this document, or the "License") is not an Open
Source license. However, the Licensed Work will eventually be made available
under an Open Source License, as stated in this License.
Particularly relevant the first paragraph, in my opinion, that covers quite nicely the example described by @eboado:
The Licensor hereby grants you the right to copy, modify, create derivative
works, redistribute, and make non-production use of the Licensed Work. The
Licensor may make an Additional Use Grant, above, permitting limited
production use.
This shows how actually Business License is pretty open to personal usage and does not really hamper innovation.
The change license, as I may have unclearly stated above, doesnât have to be GPL2.0, it just needs to be compatible with GPL2.0. That would be the case for an MIT license. As it came in second, it would probably be preferable as the change license after the change date is hit.
But concerning a change date, I would rather move for a vote on this, as many people also stated 2 years (including me) and some, like DeFiance even up to 3 years, as their preferred wait time. I think that 1 year is a rather short period of time, even in the crypto space.
Concerning the possibility of AAVE SAGL holding the license in trust for a time, while a potential DAO incorporation takes place, I would like to see a signal if that would be considered by the company. That would be good to actually discuss more concrete plans.
I was thinking, is it really that important that a legal entity owns the license?
I know it wont be possible to legally enforce it if its not held by a legal representative, but to be honest i think it will not happen anyway. Its just too big of an hassle to chase after anons and probably wont achieve anything.
To me the important thing is being able to call out, mediatically speaking, violators of the license. That would be enough to let users know about unauthorized and potentially dangerous forks.
Could the DAO own the license, and elect a legal representative on a per case basis?
I am mostly concerned about this slowing down the V3 release process, in my opinion not worth it.
The problem with a DAO âowningâ the licence is basically that a DAO is not a static group of people. In that kind of context, itâs very difficult to say anything about âownershipâ, which is actually about 11 different kinds of rights.
A relatively quick solution would be to settle a trust where the licence is held by the company, but only as trustee for anyone who holds a governance token. The trust deed can be drafted such that a majority vote of the beneficiaries (so the people the trust property is held for) is needed for release of the licence or something like that.
The issue that then arises is, does this create regulatory problems, since buying a governance token is actually buying a piece of an asset. There are ways around that (I think) that can be done through drafting the trust deed properly, but itâs definitely something to keep an eye out for.
Edit: I mean a separate holding company - not an incorporated form of the DAO.
Does that mean a absolute majority, so it has to be 51% of governance tokens needing to take a vote? Because that could cause problems, right? Seeing how just a few percent voted in the license vote, and also AAVE being bound on CEX, this might never be achievable on chain.
I know from small investments in UK start ups that for some decisions, theyâll track you down because they need your signature, other decisions they just give you a deadline, because itâs a simple majority vote (mostly because of pre-emption rights). But in most cases there, the majority is bound within a founder or within a few founders anyway, so 51% is more easily achieved.
Even if itâs just a question of release of the license from the trustee, that might bind the license to them forever, because youâll never achieve the majority to have it released.
Edit: tl;dr: This is basically just saying that any form of governance over a license or an incorporated DAO needs to be easy and functional.
Hey all, jumping into the discussions. While I am a full advocate on open source technologies and I believe that intellectual property end of the day will not exist in the public goods ecosystem (as folks with legal backgrounds know the theory - laws that are difficult/impossible to enforce arenât actually laws, which is quite true in permissionless environments), instead will be replaced with derivative on-chain commercial rights.
Open source first of all in web3 is important to ensure that a community ensures wider consensus on decision making and if wide consensus isnât met, the minority has always the option to fork away to create a new community. This is a healthy reminder for the community to reach consensus. Proprietary license would kill to some extent the forking ability for legitimate community members in such position, which is counter intuitive for decentralization and what we are trying to achieve in web3.
However, the license that the community chose wasnât actually proprietary license de facto, instead Delayed Open Source license which gives the community time to stabilize the technology and adoption until its ready for wider adoption and use, which is fair considered the amount the developers and community has spent time on developing the software and ensuring that there the errors are at minimum before the software is open sourced.
Neither the vote was about the transfer of the intellectual property from the developers factually to a third party or to a DAO, the vote was about the developers of the code (the genesis team) as a Licensor (similar model what Uniswap did with their V3) to license the code to the DAO for exclusive use to avoid malicious forks and deployment of software that would not be necessarily yet ripe for wider adoption. After the time period (1 year), the license would become open source meaning anyone can fork it for commercial purposes as well.
The good part here is that the DAO has the license to use without the need for creating a legal entity, and creates new opportunities for so called âauthorizedâ or âcoordinatedâ forks to ensure the feedback loops between the Aave community and new forks that supports the community. Most importantly, nothing stops developers on experimenting the code on non-production environment for example in hackathons. However, most of the innovation regarding the protocol actually happens by building on top than actually modifying the current protocol behaviour.
Reading afterwards, I think lot of confusion in the topic is regarding how intellectual property works from jurisprudence perspective and also from the impact perspective. The way I see it, even as I wanted the software to be Open Soure, I am also happy to see Delayed Open Source in the benefit for the community and building better software over the long-run.
Itâs a very flexible device, so this part can be drafted in whatever way is deemed efficient. Of course voting on governance proposals has a low turnout (even in high-profile projects like AAVE), so this could easily be taken into account.
Not sure how relevant this is following the big manâs comment above, since he doesnât seem to be envisioning a transfer of any actual property to anyone. A licence, I would only add, is capable of being held under a trust (despite the fact that it is not âpropertyâ in strict jurisprudential taxonomy) and this would not entail the creation of a legal entity but only defining the people who stand to benefit from the licence as the holders of Aave governance tokens. So this form of legal integration would not be opposed to what he wrote above.
So the license will be held by AAVE SAGL and the governance never really had a say in this? Why wasnât this communicated way earlier in the discussion? Or at the beginning?
Yes, true, it apparently is not relevant. Thank you for the answer and your input, though.
So no transfer of property, but the code will be licensed to the DAO.
This is just legal taxonomy - itâs basically the difference between owning a house for a year and being given the right to live in it for a year. It doesnât make much philosophical difference in terms of governance principles, but does change the legal landscape quite a bit.
That might be true, but itâs still a lot of wasted time thinking about different angles to this that couldâve been avoided.
And I presume that itâll make a difference to some people who previously âcontributedâ to this threat or that Iâve seen on CT talking about this.
I have the same perspective - I donât think fear or grudge should ever be a limiting factor.
I would assume it limits the trust as well as the community involvement which both are hard drawbacks.
The phenomenon of opportunists taking advantage of it in an âevilâ way and burn unknowing or uncaring people is something else to be furtherly understood - I mean to be furtherly understood in tha way I donât know if it even is a problem which needs a solution - less how the solution could look.
LMYAU 
Theater twist!! company actually own IP and whole conversation was joke.
thank you @Emilio and other employee of aave larping as community member for mislead community thinking BL would be OWNED by DAO and not company.
imagine misleading community in such crucial vote, was not expecting from @Emilio, looks like he had principle on twitter. down bad.
And bravo Stani for grand finali, reveal of licencing rugpull.))) imagine being able to say what a vote is about AFTER vote, very decentralized xaxaxxa. good luck.)
oh yes @Guard is well know renting house for a year is same as owning for a year and selling it. its not like owning IP has any value anyway, it-it⌠doesnt have value rr-rright ? ))) can tell people they philosophically own the house xxaxaxxxx
@neptune sorry, feel for you, trolled you, but next time dont trust, verify.
took defense of team without knowledge of aave plan and im sure you defend again when i ââtrollââ to say will never release IP, in 1,2,3 years will argue v3 code now irrelevant and new code going under temporary BL xaxaxa)))
Reading remains the best kept secret in the world.
Huge fan of AAVE, and keep being amazed by the community, stability of the protocol and the trust it generates.
With regards to the V3 licensing discussion, I am an fervent supporter of Open Source, as this generates the base level of trust for web3 and crypto in general. Code forks should not be a worry, as it takes a community or DAO to make a project to a success, generate the trust required and attract liquidity from the market.
As such AAVE has been doing very fine with the previous V1 and V2 in open source and I see no compelling reasons to mitigate away from that strategy.
If V3 would be closed source, then it would open the gates for alternatives and thatâs not what should happen.