Satoshi and Intellectual Property

TL;DR the claim that Satoshi Nakamoto supported intellectual property in Bitcoin is unsubstantiated by the public evidence available to us from Satoshi Nakamoto’s writings and is several times actually contradicted. While this does not prove that Satoshi did not plan from the start of his work developing Bitcoin to enforce intellectual property claims in the future, we should treat claims like that with skeptiscm and demand primary source proof.

Source #1: MIT License

Satoshi chose one of the most permissive software licenses he could for Bitcoin. Some point to the copyright notice at the top as being evidence that Satoshih intended to enforce copyright claims, but what they don’t understand is that it is the default MIT License format and not direct evidence of anything.

Copyright (c) 2009 Satoshi Nakamoto

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.

Source #2: Bitcoin open source implementation of P2P currency

In a post on the P2P Foundation website on February 11, 2009, Satoshi writes that Bitcoin is an “open source project.”

Source #3: Re: Questions about Bitcoin

In a forum post on December 10, 2009, Satoshi writes that Bitcoin software must be open source for security reasons.

Being open source means anyone can independently review the code.  If it was closed source, nobody could verify the security.  I think it's essential for a program of this nature to be open source.

In a forum post on February 24, 2010, Satoshi announces some new Bitcoin logos and releases these logos into the public domain copyright free.

I release these images into the public domain (copyright-free).  I request that derivative works be made public domain.

Source #5: Idea for file hosting and proxy services

In a forum post on March 15, 2010, Satoshi speculates that a file hosting site that accepts Bitcoin payments would be very useful, and says that this service would ideally be in the public domain.

It would be nice if we made some free PHP code for an image and file hosting service that charges Bitcoins.  Anyone with some extra bandwidth quota could throw it on their webserver and run it.  Users could finally pay the minor fee to cover bandwidth cost and avoid the limits and hassles.  Ideally, it should be MIT license or public domain.

Source #6: Re: who is bitcoin.com

In a forum post on March 23, 2010, Satoshi writes that it doesn’t matter that the bitcoin.com url is already taken because “it’s standard for open source projects to be .org.”

Source #7: Re: Switch to GPL

In a forum post on September 12, 2010, Satoshi explains that he chose the MIT License because it allows for a wide range of compatibilities, not just non-commercial ones, and thus would have the effect of creating the most open developer enviornment in which licensing doesn’t get in the way. He also says the fear of closed source takeover is overexaggerated.

If the only library is closed source, then there's a project to make an open source one.

If the only library is GPL, then there's a project to make a non-GPL one.

If the best library is MIT, Boost, new-BSD or public domain, then we can stop re-writing it.

I don't question that GPL is a good license for operating systems, especially since non-GPL code is allowed to interface with the OS.  For smaller projects, I think the fear of a closed-source takeover is overdone.

In a forum post on November 13, 2010, Satoshi suggests that work on Bitcoin graphics would be easier if everyone would just put their work into the public domain.

Source #9: Re: More BitCoin questions

In an email reply to Mike Hearn on January 07, 2011, Satoshi asks Mike about the licensing on his work on a client-only implentation of Bitcoin.

The first client-only implementation will really start to move things to the next step.  Is it going to be open source, or Google proprietary?

Mike replies that he is indeed planning to open source the work and Satoshi writes back:

Perfect.  Once your code shows how to simplify it down, other authors can follow your lead.

Source #10: Re: Open sourced my Java SPV impl

In an email reply to Mike Hearn on March 09, 2011, Satoshi writes that it is “great” that Mike was able to open source his Java SPV implementation.