Hi all, looking for some clarity on how the current code licensing applies when creating a Parachain, and the implications it can have for commercial models.
As a disclaimer, I’m new to the ecosystem, have done all online courses I could find, read most of the documentation, checked the main github projects, and built a small use-case for an internal demo. That being said would appreciate any support and clarity on this, as it will help stear how we can build things on Polkadot while retaining competitiveness and managing internal IP.
From reading the documentation and checking the GitHub projects and pallets, licensing doesn’t appear to be consistent across, and it’s harder to manage when there are dependencies between them.
For smart-contracts things look mostly straightforward depending on how much you want to reuse from existing libraries, but for a Parachain it doesn’t look as straightforward.
From the documentation it looks like a Parachain that integrates with Polkadot need to either use Cumulus or write it’s own version of the protocol (which is prohibitive for any new-comer). This is where it becomes tricky, because the main license applied to Cumulus is GPL 3.0 with no exemptions, meaning the entire Parachain would need to be GPL 3.0, which poses some risk and challenges for commercial applications.
Is this correct, or am I missing something?
And if correct, does it have a reason for this license instead of a more permissive one?
How are teams with commercial offering managing this?
I know it is possible to safeguard IP by simply doing the bare minimum on the Parachain and push everything else to Oracles for anything commercially sensitive, but it feels a bit limiting and harder for anyone that wants to bring a strong commercial use-case into the ecosystem.
Would be great to get feedback, insights and clarity on this, and if I haven’t understood something properly.
Thanks in advance,
RDSC
