@kowalabearhugs Currently, some parts of Cuprate are licensed under AGPL-3. This means anyone using this code should keep their derivative works as open source and use the same license. The license protects the project from hostile forks and generally serves as a deterrent against privatization of public goods. Lemmy, Mastodon and many other Fediverse servers use AGPL-3 license and it is totally reasonable choice for Cuprate too.

However, when this CCS proposal was discussed some people started to push aggressively against AGPL (going as far as calling it “legal nightmare”) and the developer agreed to change the license and even agreed to re-write AGPL-licensed parts of the application if needed.

As I said, this is a mistake, and makes Monero weaker. I think Cuprate may eventually become a dominant implementation because Rust provides a better security and developer experience, and a big chunk of modern cryptographic libraries is being written in Rust (especially in zero-knowledge cryptography). But now any company can safely use Cuprate as part of their infrastructure because it has business-friendly license, create a closed-source fork and hire developers who were previously working on open-source version.

The change of license is basically a signal that corporate interests are more important than interests of ordinary users. As for examples of where this attitude leads, see any cryptocurrency project where companies or “foundations” pay developers for their work and therefore shape the product. Exceptions are rare, and Monero is one of few that relies on donations and crowdfunding.