The business model of the internet hinges on the interplay of proprietary and open source. In the typical model, an enterprise develops an open source underlying codebase, that is then monetized by a centralized for profit corporation.
Redhat Linux pioneered this model in the late 1990s, much to the chagrin of Linux core developers. Despite a valiant effort to reward Linux contributors with shares of stock in the Redhat corporation, the systems for compensating open source development remain controversial.1
In the web2 era, proprietary moats developed using the underlying rails of HTTP:// and other core protocols. While users rely on the open internet to access the FAANG behemoths, in web2 no monetization inherently accrues to the maintainers of the underlying protocols.
With the rise of public persistent data (aka blockchain) the monetization of open source entered a new "Web3" era.
Developers believing in the protocol, for the first time could be compensated in the native unit of the protocol. Either by purchasing tokens directly, or through increasingly sophisticated grant mechanisms. By 2016, this thesis was codified into the seminal blog post "Fat Protocols 2 where the author posits open source protocol tokens will solve the Redhat vs Linux compensation and incentive issue.
Fast forward to 2024, and it is mandatory for the core protocol layers of Web3 (L1/L2 blockchains, Oracles, DA, Restaking, etc) to be open source to be trusted. //However// the Dapps built on top of Web3 are largely NOT. The VC model to fund teams that take open source infrastructure to then build proprietary business logic moats on top of is still alive and well.3 Conjecture.. the development of Web3 killer Dapps is being stymied by this proprietary smothering.
The RAIR protocol has been in active development since 2019 as an investor backed enterprise SaaS product. In 2024, the entire RAIR Codebase is available for the first time via an open source Apache 2.04 token licensing model.
Throughout this whitepaper, we will articulate our reasoning for going fully open source, and expound upon our token licensing model to reward the development of the RAIR token supported Dapp layer.