We are open source!
Yes, the gossip is true — the technology behind the evan.network is now available under an open source license.
But let’s start the whole story from the beginning. In the last three years, we developed an enterprise framework based on Ethereum with which companies can build their own decentralized business models in an easy and secure way. From what we have seen so far, our technology undoubtedly ranks today among the top 3 Blockchain industry solutions in Europe.
In several pilot projects over the last years with companies like Festo, Audi or Bosch we tested and expanded the functionality of our technology. We were really happy and satisfied with our development and results. But we also asked ourselves more and more often, whether our way is the right one. Because what we did was to build mainly private chains for every company without a connection between these solutions. And that is actually not the point behind Blockchain technology. We had to learn that if companies really want a decentralized basis for sharing data and collaboration, it requires an open Blockchain ecosystem, which is operated jointly by various trustworthy companies. That was the birth of the initiative behind the evan.network.
At the same time with the launch of evan.network, we decided that our developed technology should be made open source. And that happened today.
Why do we go open source?
There are several reasons why we think that the technology behind an open Blockchain should be open source, as well. Probably the biggest motivation was to see how developers and companies use our software as the basis for creating as many cross-industry Blockchain solutions as possible. This gives us the ability to scale the network regardless of our own resources to become the number one enterprise Blockchain platform.
Another important fact was that if we make our source code public, the code can be reviewed and improved potentially by each developer in the community. New features, created by the community, can be quickly integrated and errors can be detected and resolved faster than if only a small team of developers has access to the source code. Especially if you want to use Blockchain technology in businesses, it is important to understand how for example a Smart Contract works in detail.
Last but not least we see ourselves as part of a big community. We use software written by other developers every day to solve our own challenges. So why we should not give other developers the ability to build their own Blockchain applications quickly and securely, based on our technology? Anyway, we believe that not one Blockchain is the panacea for all our problems, but the combination of different technologies determines the future.
License forms to be part of the evan.network
As we also comply with the licensing conditions of open source technologies that we use on a daily basis, we expect the same from you as well. Our team has invested a lot of time in recent years to make the Ethereum public chain enterprise ready — that is what we have achieved with evan.network. To use our work, there are two different license forms which you should look at:
- all samples and templates are under Apache 2. This allows developers to use them as a basis for their own developments and to modify them completely
- core Smart Contracts and their libraries are available under AGPL V3. These can only be used freely on the evan.network. However, if these are to be modified, the changes must be restored, or the products must also be placed under AGPL V3. For use outside of the evan.network, commercial licenses can be purchased.
We really tried to make the licensing terms simple and straightforward. After all, it is our goal that as many developers, companies and organizations as possible use evan.network to implement their own developments.
If you have any questions about the topics open source and license, please contact us under license.question@evan.network.
For those who want to try out a Smart Contract on evan.network, we recommend our blog post:
You can find everything about the evan.network software on Github.
