I am writing an article for a magazine on how blockchain is a natural evolution of open source. Now I know that open source is conceptual whereas blockchain is an actual technology. But I was wondering if blockchain could be considered a new form of open source implementation of systems given that they both find their roots in the same principles of decentralisation and transparency. Would love to get thoughts of fellow developers on this.
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Top comments (6)
With all the love and respect of the world, I feel the statement to be a bit non-sensical. The question is still interesting and can give way to nice insights, though.
Block-chain is a technology that can have a historical basis on open-source contributors, but nothing that I know about the technology is 'intrinsic' to open source. A private entity could build and operate blockchain technology with no overlap of open source concepts, despite the initial aim that the founder had.
Even if blockchain comes directly from open source contributions, you could say the same to many of the digital technologies of the world. That group is so big that the statement loses on actually transmiting useful information.
Maybe I'm missing a point, in which case I would happily change my take on it.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. I do realize that there is no intrinsic connection between the two technology. They are too very separate concepts solving different problems. However, they seem to share quite a few principles such as decentralisation, enhanced security, transparency etc. One cant help but feel that somewhere down the line, the open source revolution did play a hand at inspiring the creation of blockchain. At least that is what the focus of the article is. I hope I was able to convey my point more clearly.
Then I would argue that you might be considering 'convergent evolution' in technological systems, where different platforms tend to the same values because those values are the ones that make better systems, and in super competitive envoriments like open source, all technologies tend to that.
I think these 2 concepts as center pieces of a observation of the 'evolution' of technological systems with analogies to natural selection, and which principles would be convergent in the future would be a super interesting read.
Thank you for your insights. You have certainly given me a lot to think about. I will talk about convergent evolution in the article.
I'd say that in hackers philosophy, decentralized and distributed design make systems more robust (than centralized ones), and they also can give the individual his part of sovereignty that would be captured by any organization. The power of a hacker resides in his ability to access tech resources, what is provided by open-source (designed by hackers for hackers). Blockchains offer technological opportunities to implement fair (although unfair is also possible) resource distribution and allocation systems. Without open-source mindset, blockchain use is just another effective implementation of actual bank system. With libre mindset, it becomes a way to change power and resource distribution. I agree with you on the fact that Open source and blockchain both offer a new way of building trust, by decentralization and transparency. What kind of trust would generate an opaque blockchain?
Thank you for your analysis on this topic.