Blockchain and Open Source: The new world order

Kate Craig-Wood, award-winning IT entrepreneur and well-known advocator of open source technology has today revealed that she believes blockchain and open source software will be allies in the evolution of IT in her keynote presentation at Oscon London.

Alongside keynote speakers including Liam Maxwell (HM Government) and Mark Shuttleworth (Canonical), Kate Craig-Wood’s keynote, titled ‘Blockchain & OpenSource: The new world order’ kicked off the O'Reilly Open Source Convention today.

Craig-Wood said: “I believe blockchain technology will enable a new, open-source-driven, decentralised paradigm in IT. In my opinion, open source has yet to truly have its day, but that day is upon us and blockchain could be the catalyst.”

“Open source and blockchain are kindred spirits and natural allies in the fight for liberalism and meritocracy,” continued Craig-Wood.

Unlike cloud, which has been dominated by proprietary providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google, most leading blockchain technology is open source. This makes sense. As a concept, centralisation is generally conservative / pro-establishment / big-corporate whereas a distributed approach is more libertarian / anarchic / community-driven - just like the open source movement."

Drawing parallels between the two, Craig-Wood said: “Most blockchains are open source to start with, and just like the open source technology, the blockchain is distributed and relies on peer consensus to agree on validity & verification.”

Despite most people believing that the advent of cloud has spurred on a period of decentralization, it is, in fact, a very much a centralized period of IT consumption. The Cloud centralisation wave has been different – it is non-local due to massive connectivity. What comes next though? Craig-Wood believes we’ll soon be welcoming “A new paradigm of blockchain-driven, massively-distributed IT running on open source software. That has the potential not only to transform IT but also the world of business through cryptocurrencies, smart contracts and decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs).”

Craig-Wood concluded her presentation urging the audience to recognize the potential of blockchain and to “start building dApps.”

To watch Kate’s keynote, please see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBolXgwGXIQ 

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