The New Deal for the Open Source Community

Building the Economic Layer to our Digital Infrastructure

Our connected world depends on open source software, so at Deconet, we’re focusing on the complex problems that sit at the intersection of innovation, collaborative software development, and the future of work. We are setting out to optimize digital infrastructure by creating technology for new incentive structures.

Deconet is creating the technical and economic system for decentralized entities to capture and distribute value in a meritocratic and contribution-based way. With Deconet, technologists can sell software licenses and API credits to a global marketplace from wherever they are, to whomever wants to buy them. They can do so without having to set up a new business or shoulder the responsibility of driving demand. For projects with multiple contributors, the developers, designers, and product managers can be paid in an automated and equitable way. Teams can also easily rewards the open and free project they depend on.

In simplest terms, Deconet is building the economic layer to decentralized software projects — finally making them rewarding and sustainable to build and maintain for contributors.

The reason we are able to do this now hinges on one particular technology: the blockchain, which enables us to tackle systems level optimization issues, by creating new payment rails and incentivize structures that reinforce ‘pay it forward’ kinds of behavior.

But Deconet is more than a product solving a problem: we’re part of the movement to make open source a more viable career path.

Nadia Eghbal details the critical point we are reaching with the open source ecosystem in brilliant report Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure, which I enthusiastically recommend in its entirety to fully understand the scope of this problem.

Here’s a summary of her framing on the problem, emphasis added:

“Just like physical infrastructure, digital infrastructure needs regular upkeep and maintenance. In the United States, over half of government spending on transportation and water infrastructure goes just to maintenance. But financial support for digital infrastructure is much harder to come by. Currently, any financial support usually comes through sponsorships, direct or indirect, from software companies.”

Our goals are lofty, but the problem is huge, and now is the time to create a sustainable solution.

How We Got Here

Our passion for, and belief in, the history and future of open source code is at the heart of Deconet. Consider cryptocurrencies: their development as open source projects and the resulting appreciation of value for the creators of this infrastructure is evidence of a bigger trend of more equitable rewards for the most involved contributors.

Like maintaining our roads, power lines, and pipelines, our digital infrastructure is in dire need of a system to ensure its preservation and continued development. Financially sustainable open source must be part of the move towards a creator-driven future.

We understood this tension from our own work, but wanted to deeply study the challenges faced by others in same situation. There were three ‘categories’ of people whose insights we use as a guiding lights to develop Deconet:

1. Open Source Developers

Whether morally motivated, solving their own problems, seeking a job, or looking for a vehicle for specialization, there are many reasons developers choose open source code. Chris and I have almost two decades of combined experience with software products and the challenges and passions that are ever-present for this community of open source developers. Rather than just trusting our own experiences up to this point, we wanted to understand the motivations of as many open source developers as possible — both inside and outside our network — to ensure that we can best serve their needs.

2. Startups and Corporations

Many companies, from Fortune 500 corporations to brand new startups, want to be involved with or incorporate open source code in some capacity. Yet their approach has a caveat: through using open source code, they don’t want to create something a competitor can later use to threaten their defensibility.

We want to answer the question many of these companies have: “How do we open source software, but retain some level of defensibility?”

Alex is not an entire category of people. However, as the former head of blockchain at UBS where he also focused on software licensing, Alex quickly became an invaluable resource for our understanding of the compliance nuances of this picture.

Alex confirmed our understanding of what existing entities like Red Hat do to address compliance on open source use at the enterprise level. Essentially, companies assume liability for their enterprise customers to protect them from a lack of compliance — that is, when they use open source code without the proper licensing.

The actual approach to offering this protection, however, can range from adversarial to counter-productive: a specialized legal team exists to protect enterprises who are caught stealing from open source developers.

Flipping the Script

The current compliance paradigm often creates an adversarial relationship toward developers. Companies fear them as potential litigators who may sue them for improper use of their code — and in many cases, the developers would be well within their rights to do so.

Solving compliance and incentivizing ongoing open source development demands we flip the problem.

Rather than pitting corporations against the very developers behind the code powering the corporations’ products, Deconet seeks to align their incentives.

In Deconet’s model, companies transparently secure rights for commercial use of open source software on the blockchain, and the licensing fee creates immediate incentive for developers to continue building on their open source work.

Copyleft Software and Dual Licensing

Copyleft software is an essential component Deconet’s mission to change the approach to open source for developers. Copyleft code is birthed from the Free Software Foundation. In this context, we’re talking about free as in freedom rather than free as in beer.

Here’s how Copyleft works: I create something and release it under a copyleft provision, such as the GPL (GNU General Public License). If you take it and use it, you have to make your project open and free regardless of what you create with my code. It makes ongoing development efficient since everyone is working on the same code base; features don’t need to be written twice and bugs can be squashed once for everyone.

Some companies make money for their open source code by releasing two versions of the same code: one licensed under GPL and a proprietary version, which is sold as a commercial product. For example, the popular MySQL database is distributed with this kind of dual licensing setup.

Part of Deconet’s first product allows for individual developers to leverage turnkey dual licensing.

A Marketplace for Code

We are creating a new avenue for developers to get paid for their work, and in doing so, creating new ways for enterprises to remain compliant. With Deconet, developers can sell code on a global marketplace. This is done be selling commercial software licenses as well as APIs credits that allow access to specialized software functions.

By way of analogy, consider Airbnb: the startup let homeowners turn an extra room in into extra income, without demanding hosts start a business — or even create demand. Before Airbnb, hosts would need to incorporate an LLC to set up a bed and breakfast before they could lease our their room for a few nights.

Airbnb lets anyone commercialize extra living space with low compliance exposure or overhead costs.

Deconet brings this concept to the digital world, allowing anyone to commercialize their software with a simple listing — not a corporation with a sales team and retained legal counsel.

The Next Steps for Open Source Projects

Letting developers commercialize ‘free’ software is just the first step towards sustainable open source. Our roadmap is focused on creating the financial infrastructure for the next great open source projects.

To start, imagine a software project with a team of three earns $100 — whether by donation or commercial interest.

First, each contributor earns a proportion of the income relative to the value of their work on the project. In our example, all three contributors are equally valuable workers, each earning $25.

Next, the remainder of the funds are sent to a smart contract which equitably and automatically rewards all the software projects this initial project depends on. The opportunity to incentivize this kind of “pay it forward” attitude is at the heart of our tokenization efforts.

Additionally, many open source projects are technically unbanked, so enabling projects to become “entities” that exist on the blockchain creates an incentive structure for developers to keep working on their projects and pass off responsibilities when they get bored.

In other words, we’re laying the foundation for a world where open, collaborative projects can have a mix of contributors and function as DAOs — Decentralized Autonomous Organizations.

We see a future where those entities can go out and capture economic value in the world, and then that value will flow back to the contributors and backers.

Deconet as a Solution for Development

As we build more and more tools for sustainable open source, there’s an opportunity to act as a bridge between software developers and enterprises or blockchain projects. Companies, platforms, and protocols can host innovation contests on Deconet and incentivize the development of the most impactful applications.

In this way, Deconet starts to look like a massive distributed software development agency where everyone works for themselves.

With Deconet, everyone involved in writing code and creating viable products can remain driven by their own private motivations, all while benefiting from an incentive system designed to reward the building of better software.

As code continues to power almost every aspect of our daily lives, it’s essential for creators of that code to be fairly rewarded in line with the value they helped generate. We see a vision for a world where creators are automatically and ethically rewarded for their contributions, and our continuous product improvements and releases have the massive goal of building and powering this economy.

How You Can Get Involved

Now that you know our grand vision, you’ll want to take it out for a spin. The Alpha Deconet products up at http://app.deco.network and running on the Ethereum testnet.

Jump in, try it, and tell us what you think in our Telegram community!

Using Deconet to purchase access to a mobile Ethereum browser

On this Alpha, there are two roles: buyers and sellers.

This two sided marketplace that allows a seller to upload their open source code and sell proprietary licenses to otherwise copyleft code. Users can also sell access to their projects via the sales of API credits. The demand side purchases access and licenses via smart contract.

As we continue to build more tools and infrastructure for sustainable open source, we remain focused on solving real-world problems and creating the solutions for a sustainable digital future.

For more on what Chris Cassano (CTO) and I have been up to before Deconet, check us out here: Who’s the Team Building Deconet?

Ready to join the movement? Join the community below.