Nothing, and that's a good (tm) thing. It forces the Ethereum team to be the best possible custodians of the protocol and spirit of Ethereum, and prevents us from stepping out of line (i.e., do evil by making the software proprietary for example, or introducing features that would benefit us or our acquaintances personally). Everyone can (and is) reviewing the code for such shenanigans.Investor said:If it is open source, what makes it so it won't just be copied and run many times over?
The value (by that I mean its utilitarian value) of the Ethereum ecosystem lies in itself - i.e, if you @Investor were to fork the code today (you could), the community would have to decide if they wish to deploy their dapps, or simply use, your own version of Ethereum rather than the one we are building. I realize this might sound rather counterintuitive on our part, or that it could even be frustrating, as any other person out there with zero skills can claim to have the same code as ours! And, unsurprisingly, this has happened, too (but I won't link them up here as unlike the two projects mentioned above, these cynical copies add no value to the protocol, and some of them even trick people into purchasing 'subscription fees').Investor said:Where does the value lay in owning Ethers if Hacker B just copies it an sells his own currency and system calls it Ethuruem with Ethurs?