Open-source development has always enjoyed a little juice from the private sector.
One of the most notable examples is Red Hat Software, a multibillion dollar corporation that has built open-source software for the international community. It was purchased by IBM in 2019 but still carries out its original function.
Microsoft is another example of a highly profitable private company that releases open-source software. The computer monolith has helped to maintain the Linux source code for some time. It supported the software on its Azure cloud program and eventually integrated the Linux kernel[1] into its own OS.
The company also has an affinity for Bitcoin, apparently. As we covered in the spring of 2019, Microsoft has tasked a development team to build a decentralized identity system on top of Bitcoin. Dubbed ION[2], the second layer network, like Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, will feature its own node structure to complement Bitcoin’s own and will be completely open source.
Project lead Daniel Buchner believes that this system could unlock a radical new methodology for digital ownership and online credentials. Bitcoin Magazine sat down with Buchner to discuss the project, what prompted Micorosft to pursue it and what the future of the internet with digital IDs will look like.
Selling Microsoft on Bitcoin
Microsoft has had a longstanding tradition with open-source projects. So how did ION become part of that legacy? Was it a hard sell to get Microsoft building on Bitcoin?
I started the group that works on decentralized IDs (DIDs) at Microsoft. There are some tactical things we had to do. For the DIDs to really be a reality, you have to make them capable of standing up to the volumes that you expected. So often when you see this piloted, it’s [with] a few
