Allow “special exception” to the Orchard codebase for the Monero Project

Very interesting thread! I’m very conflicted for a number of reasons. The Monero community makes me ill with their misinformation and hatred. Selfishly I want to hoard Orchard for ourselves as a hard-fought prize to guard jealously. But, in the end, my core principles point me towards the view of @secparam and @garethtdavies. I dont believe in government-enforced patents and copyrights in general. So, with some pain, my 2 zats would go to a permissive MIT-style license that even Monero could use; but, not a special exception.

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I’m running a poll on Twitter to gauge interest in collaborating with XMR devs and (to my surprise) the poll has registered ~30% interest in support so far!

I’m a strong proponent of free licenses for works that benefit the world, especially the works funded by block rewards - to live in the public domain as it allows unrestricted growth & adoption, and such works end up circulating longer around various domains & industries and ultimately move humanity forward VS being limited & possessed by a centralized company.

For this particular request, the Monero project wants to have unrestricted access to the BOSL licensed ECC code. Firstly, working on any bleeding-edge code requires close collaboration between core developers, I would rather have the Zcash core devs focus on the long list of improvements that have been pending, before committing to partnerships and time commitments to cater to daily Q&A on their works. Secondly, I don’t have confidence in Monero to adopt Orchard pool any time soon as stated by Seth too, in this case, they should most likely follow @str4d 's advice and adopt BOSL license for their own codebase as per the stated intent of the license! And lastly, I believe this sudden request is a result of panic within the Monero community as there are some discussions floating around DNMs wanting to switch from XMR to ZEC. Now, Zcash has a strong history of being compliant with law enforcement and to my knowledge, has no interest in aiding DNM activities. With the onslaught of Zcash FUD being spread following the news around Snowden’s involvement, the Monero community seems to be suddenly worried about losing their market share as they are planning for the network upgrades following the upcoming July hard fork. v15 Network Upgrade Checklist · Issue #690 · monero-project/meta · GitHub

I like the BOSL license for Orchard technology, it provides ample time for competitors to test, evaluate and study the spec before making a decision to adopt Zcash tech and possibly build interoperability with Zcash! I would love to see Shielded ZEC pools on Solana, Algorand, and other chains and freely be able to send native ZEC between chains someday.

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I’d like to hear from @kayabaNerve as he is part of both the Zcash & Monero communities!

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The way I see it, BOSL tries to solve the freeloader problem and make sure any improvements made to the code base can be used by everyone, after some time. It’s innovative and tries to be in the middle of GPL and MIT.

Personally, rather than MIT license, I would advocate for GPL and make sure only open source projects can benefit from community funded projects. I can’t see how making it easy for closed-source code bases to freely profit off work funded by the Zcash community is a good thing.

Back to this particular topic: I support giving exception to the Monore project to use Orchard code on two conditions:

  1. There is clear interest by the Monero community to use the code in Monero.
  2. Give acknowledgement in the exception notice that projects using the Orchard code is partly funded by the Zcash community. :smiley:
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First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.

Hard pound sand, go be innovative on your own dime.

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Relevant to this thread, some in the Monero community have pressured Haveno(including threats against devs) to not proceed with their plans to list ZEC as a trading pair on the Bisq fork.
Most would have noticed the high level of backlash from the Monero community towards Haveno for listing ZEC(which is already supported by Bisq). The general sentiment seemed to be that the Monero community was ok to list any project other than ZEC. The Monero community funded part(not all) of the Haveno dex and appeared outraged that their funding would go towards anything that might support or associate them with ZEC in any way.

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I think some tech should be kept private

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This situation was similar to the backlash from the Monero community following Cake wallet obtaining a ZCG grant to support shielded ZEC. The Monero community were outraged that a project that they supported would have anything to do with ZEC and/(from what I could see at least) threatened to ‘cancel’ Cake wallet.
As a result Cake started work on a Monero only wallet and have not started work on the ZCG grant. Its unclear if they intend to proceed with the grant.

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@aiyadt articulated it best & there are ample examples why exception shouldn’t be made to Monero.

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Thanks for sharing this information here.

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Very weird that this request is being made before the Orchard pool is live nor have seen any adoption. I’m honestly surprised why Monero wants to integrate Orchard but not Sapling (which is MIT licensed & already used by other blockchains). If you care about privacy, start with Sapling integration?

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I think you vastly overestimate the technical competence on Monero side. Let me give you a factoid to demonstrate what I mean:

They didn’t write their own implementation, they are using code made by an unknown group that I will call “the Cryptonote group”. The Cryptonote group re-wrote their codebase three times. V1.0 is what you could call … early alpha and it really sucks. In 2016 they released V2.0 and currently Bytecoin is floating what appears to be V3.0 of the code.

Monero doesn’t even have the technical skill to port their changes from V1.0 to V3.0, they are stuck there. Never mind bigger changes like copying sapling and writing circuits on top of it.

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If they cared about privacy, they would encourage z-address integration into HavenaDex. Now it’s removed, Require z-addresses for ZEC · Issue #248 · haveno-dex/haveno · GitHub

I guess Monero community hates Zcash forever.

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We are not monero

I’m appalled that people seem to forget Zcash is a financial tool, a cryptocurrency and not just a science project.

I want to praise the ECC @zooko clearly has antibodies in their veins to fight real world attacks like this one by Monero trolls.

As a cryptocurrency, we need to build network effect and this license is perfect to prevent freeloaders to steal from us. Without network effect, the devfund can stay poor forever.

Careful what you wish for, people voting YES are causing harm even if they don’t realize it yet.
Clearly, I will keep track of people voting YES and next time they ask to be in a seat of governance I will remind them this thread and their vote.

PSA: People who wants to have free discussion on this, head over reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/zec/comments/uehbtg/allow_special_exception_to_the_orchard_codebase/

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What kind of drugs are these guys on? Constantly bashing zcash and its community and now they want to use the code which was made possible only because of zcash users.

Rather than giving them an exception I propose that the code should be locked for a minimum period of 2 years or till the next halving so more privacy focused individuals can be on boarded onto zcash. Or till we have the same coin circulation as that of Monero!

Also till the pool is over, all new accounts made in last 24 hours should be barred from voting.

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I don’t think this is a genuine request. All we are doing here is creating ammunition for @sethforprivacy 's and @sgp 's next tweets about how MobileCoin is stealing their FOSS code (they aren’t even using the same curve as Monero, but the truth doesn’t matter to them) and how Zcash is bad for not allowing them to use their code.

@tokidoki @Shawn For that reason I think the topic should be locked and a note with the above observation should be attached to the top. This will at least deny them the ammunition.

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++
There is no smell of sincerity here:

Source.

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I refuse to give an exception for Monero to use the Zcash community-funded Orchard code.

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