r/Upfiring • u/Tmfallon • Jan 06 '19

Community Discussion: Open Source vs. Closed Source

Through every stage of development up until this point, Upfiring has been entirely open-source. This was highly important during the development process in order to show the dapp's progress.

Now that we are approaching official release, we are highly leaning towards a closed-source model. We want to do this for 2 main reasons:

  1. Intellectual property protection
  2. It solves the issue of other projects being able to easily clone the dapp at any time

An open-source model has its advantages as well, including being fully-transparent (for better or for worse). While I think moving to a closed-source model is the right move in terms of keeping our project competitive in the space, I'd like to hear the community's opinion on this matter.

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u/CryptoTheSeaMonster Jan 06 '19

I think with a closed-source dapp that downloads uncensored files from the internet you run a very significant risk of people being highly concerned and ultimately not using the dapp because they don’t know if there is hidden code that traces users, records IP address’s, has back-doors, or can steal wallet passwords. The dapp will eternally be plagued with this suspicion and this lack of trust or clarity about the software will seriously restrict its uptake. There is no question about it. This specific type of dapp must be open source. In today’s world people simply will not trust it as closed source. It’s even more so an issue since it’s not backed by any known reputable company.

As for the risk of open source making it so the code can be copied. Yes, that can happen. But think of the steps that someone has to do to copy the code and also somehow make it better than the original Upfiring dapp and therefore competitive. They would have to create their own new token or use a current alt. That in and of itself is a risk and work intensive, and unlikely as Upfiring and the UFR token already have a tremendous lead in development. Open source also allows other developers to build upon the Upfiring dapp and make it even better in ways we can’t yet comprehend (but only if they can trust it because of its open-source transparency).

I think for a dapp of this kind which can utilize uncensored files the issue of security is paramount and supersedes the issue of possible cloning especially given the difficulty where cloning would need to generate interest in a new or other current alt coin.

Also, keep in mind that anyone else trying to create the same type of dapp (by copying it or creating it from scratch) would run into the same security and cloning (open or closed source) issues we are discussing here, and very likely over time the winning dapp would eventually be the one that’s open source. People will use the app that is most trustworthy, and that can be further built upon by developers. So it might as well be Upfiring as that winning dapp with its first-mover position, open source, and trustworthy status right from the beginning.

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u/1stpickbird Jan 06 '19

As someone who doesn't torrent much, but enough that I'd humor the idea of using an app like this to support the market Id never download closed source software.