Andre Cronje, director of the Fantom Foundation and co-founder of Sonic Labs, posted on X today that he found a project with a total locked asset value (TVL) of US$1 billion and a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of US$1 billion. The project uses his open source code (licensed under GPL3), but repackages the code under a BUSL license.
In other words, this project changed the GPL3 licensed code that was supposed to remain open source to a license with commercial restrictions, which may limit the rights of others to freely use or distribute this code. This is often seen as a violation of the terms of the original GPL3 license, as it deprives the code of its open source attributes.
Andre Cronje criticized:
“I can accept not being acknowledged, I can accept them removing my name from the code, I can even accept them not mentioning me or the original project at all on the website or documentation, and going to the trouble of repackaging certain concepts to avoid Any connection. But it feels really bad that they took something from open source and changed it to a restricted license and made a ton of money off of it... The field is changing a lot more than I thought..."
Just saw a project with $1bn TVL and $1bn FDV that took my open source code (under GPL3) and slapped on a BUSL license. I can take not being credited, I can take them removing my name from the code, I can take them not mentioning me or the original project anywhere on their…
— Andre Cronje (@AndreCronjeTech) October 3, 2024
Regarding the project accused by Andre Cronje, many people speculate that it is most likely based on Base's Aerodrome. In addition to TVL and FDV matching Andre Cronje's description, its mechanism is also largely derived from the decentralized exchange built by Andre Cronje in the past. PlatformSolidly.
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