Date of Award

6-1-2017

Document Type

Thesis (Undergraduate)

Department or Program

Department of Computer Science

First Advisor

Sergey Bratus

Abstract

Open source software is one of the fundamental building blocks of today's technology dependent society and is relied upon by parties ranging from large technology corporations to individual hobbyist developers. The open question left for technologists is how to make open source software projects more sustainable. The rise of decentralized networks of self-organizing, self-coordinating users incentivized by valuable cryptographic tokens enabled by Ethereum smart contracts creates the possibility of a system with embedded economics for open source software development that aligns the incentives of all parties. We present two contributions that can serve as building blocks for a potentially better solution to open source software sustainability: a command line tool that enables a decentralized Git workflow without the need for a centralized service like Github and a proof-of-concept blockchain based protocol for incentivizing open source software development using a cryptographic token. Both contributions are implemented using Ethereum smart contracts.

Comments

Originally posted in the Dartmouth College Computer Science Technical Report Series, number TR2017-831.

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