Vitalik's Change of Perspective: Embracing "Permissioned" Governance to Address the New Competitive Era of Open Source and the Risks of Power Concentration

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently stated that he is re-evaluating his long-standing preference for permissive software licenses and advocating for broader adoption of the Copyleft licensing framework. He believes that the open-source ecosystem is entering an era of increased competition and greater centralization.

Copyleft is a concept developed by the free software movement, which is a way of licensing that uses the existing copyright system to protect the freedoms of all users and secondary developers.

In a blog post published on July 7, Buterin explained that historically, he chose permissive licenses like MIT or CC0 because they allow anyone to use, modify, and redistribute the code with minimal restrictions, which is beneficial for broader adoption.

In contrast, copyleft licenses such as GPL or CC-BY-SA require derivative works to be shared under the same terms, including the release of source code, which provides legal protection for openness.

Buterin wrote:

"Historically, I have been a fan of the permissive licensing approach. However, recently, I have developed a growing fondness for the authoritative licensing method."

The co-founder of Ethereum has significantly increased his activity in recent months, proposing and researching many new ideas against the backdrop of a shift in priorities.

◉ Protecting Openness: Buterin's Reflections

Buterin stated that his early preferences stemmed from two core ideas:

1. Lowering the Barriers for Enterprises: Looser licensing can reduce the adoption resistance of companies that are unwilling to share their own achievements.
2. Opposition to Copyright Philosophy: He holds a philosophical opposition to copyright and intellectual property laws.

He believes that relaxed licensing is practically the closest way to "no copyright at all," which aligns with his belief that "sharing data or ideas should never be seen as theft."

However, he now sees three major factors that are changing this consideration:

1. Open source has become mainstream: Companies like Google, Microsoft, and Huawei not only use open source projects but also release significant projects under open source licenses. In this environment, copyright requirements are no longer a major obstacle; rather, they can actively maintain openness by ensuring that large companies give back improvements to the community, which is especially important for blockchain development and Web3 innovation.
2. Cultural Changes in the Crypto Industry: Buterin describes the crypto space as becoming increasingly "competitive and profit-driven," with fewer projects that open source code purely out of ideology or goodwill. For cryptocurrency projects and decentralized applications (DApps), merely relying on lax permissions is no longer sufficient to ensure shared progress; legal requirements for proper authorization are needed to maintain it.
3. Economic Arguments of a Centralized World

The third major factor driving Buterin's transformation is rooted in economic theory. Drawing on the views of radical market economist Glen Weyl, he believes that in industries with Superlinear Returns to Scale (such as AI and cloud computing), strict property rights lead to a concentration of power.

He explained that if one participant's resources are double that of another's and can produce more than double the output, this gap will compound over time, ultimately leading to a monopoly.

Buterin warned that these conditions, along with rapid technological advancements and geopolitical instability, are threatening to create a lasting and self-reinforcing power imbalance between companies and states.

He pointed out that some governments have enforced technology diffusion through policies, such as the EU's standardization authorization, China's technology transfer regulations, and the recent non-compete clause ban by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

◉ Authoritative Rights: Decentralized Technology Dissemination Scheme

Buterin believes that the establishment of copyright has achieved similar technological diffusion goals in a neutral and decentralized manner:

• No need to favor specific parties or enforce from top to bottom.
• Created a vast resource pool of code (or other creative products) with the condition that: any derivative outcomes based on this must be open source and shared.

"Zhuo Zuoquan created a massive pool of code (or other creative products) resources, the core rule of which is: you can only legally use it if you are willing to share the source code of anything built based on it."

◉ The Way of Balance: Loose Permissions Still Have Value

Buterin acknowledged that when maximizing widespread application is the primary goal, permissive licenses (such as MIT / Apache 2.0) still have their significance and are valuable parts of property rights. This may still be the preferred choice for smart contract libraries or blockchain protocol standards that hope to be widely integrated.

◉ Suggestions for Developers and the Open Source Community

He urged developers and the open source community to recognize that:

"The benefits brought by the authorization of Zhuo Zuo in today's era are much greater than 15 years ago."

The open-source community should seriously consider adopting authorship rights as a mechanism:

• Prevent excessive concentration of power (especially in the foundational AI models and blockchain infrastructure fields).
• Ensure that the achievements of technological progress maintain inclusiveness, avoiding monopolization by a few giants.

At the time of Buterin's remarks, the artificial intelligence (AI) development and blockchain development communities are engaged in heated debates over licensing models. There are concerns that foundational innovations may be dominated by a small group of players. For crypto users focused on a decentralized future and anti-censorship technology, the choice of open-source license directly affects the openness and fairness of the ecosystem.

(Source: CryptoSlate)