Licensing

Primer on RAIRprotocol open source licensing

Open Token License

The RAIR open token license inherits the Apache 2.0 methodology by requiring a NFT license to be included inside the source NOTICE file.

RAIRprotocol has fully open sourced our entire development stack from the frontend and backend codebases, to how we configure our cloud setups and testing procedures. This means you can deploy, modify, and extend your own version of RAIRprotocol on your own cloud.

• RAIR C corp can assist with enterprise implementations on a SaaS/consulting basis.

• RAIR DAO licenses all source code natively via soul-bound NFT tokens. No payment is ever required for licensing RAIRprotocol, as this would violate the terms of Apache 2.0. Instead licenses act as perks to govern control over the project.

Licensing

To review, software licenses come in 2 primary flavors: proprietary and permissive. Proprietary = copy our code and we can take legal action. Permissive = copy our code without the proper attribution, and we can take legal action.

Permissive Licenses

While not exhaustive, the following permissive licenses are the most widely used. Reasons will be given below for RAIR protocol NOT using the following licenses.

• MIT: Attribution is not rigorous enough as there is no public changelog requirement.

• BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution): Custom rules make this license too broad to perform standardized enforcement.

• GPL (GNU Public License): Changelog requirement is good, though no requirement for inclusion of source License.md like Apache 2.0

• MPL (Mozilla Public License): License contamination through the automatic inheritance of GPL prevents licensing by proprietary entities.

Apache 2.0

The Apache 2.0 license requires two critical components necessary for an NFT open licensing model.

• Public Changelog. If code is modified, publish the modifications publicly.

• Inherited disclosure of license.Include the //original// License.md file into all derivative works.

Taken together, these two properties form the basis for the RAIR protocol NFT license model. E.g. Open source license is valid as long as a valid NFT exists inside of the NOTICE file

Risks and Benefits

Benefits of this open source model include:

• Trust in fully transparent source code. No black boxes.

• Developer recognition and renumeration via token

• Increased development speed for all of Web3. No rebuilding wheels

The primary risk that prevents most Dapps from fully open sourcing their code base is the theft risk.

Years and millions of dollars of IP can be forked without crediting the original creators. This risk is still present in an open token licensing model. The design of the token system must ensure the benefits of obtaining a license outweigh the costs both financial and reputational for stealing.