I think as a developer it must suck, if your code is merely "copy & pasted" by a inferior developer and then used for their personal gain. Like we are seeing being done with Bitcoin now. Most of these forks are just a copy & paste job and it is not backed by good developers.
The fact that it is then pumped to replace Bitcoin, is actually a slap in the face to the developers who contributed the most to the original Bitcoin. Satoshi's code being raped and pillaged by people who says that they are protecting it. ^joke^
Indeed, everyone who be able to copy & paste all the codes can't really reach anything if they want to do something terrible like stealing the funds as there's one-two liners of codes which prevent it happen, as Op mentioned before.
If you want to develop your own wallet, go ahead.
If you want to develop your own coin, go ahead.
But, people will decide whether it's worth or not.
To summarize, what I wanted to ask is the following:
IS THERE A WAY TO KEEP SUCH IMPORTANT SOFTWARE OPEN SOURCE (to be able to vet it) WHILE STILL PROVIDING MEANINGFUL FINANCIAL INCENTIVE TO DEVELOPERS?
The software will still open source, and developers who contribute simply because they attracted to do so, not with an intention to gain incentive. Because the developers is a user or a holder as well, they want to hedging and developing something that really worth, such as bitcoin.
But, if want to create your own coin or wallet and have to provide an open source software, codes, nodes (whatever it is)
Make sure you eliminate one-two liners of the codes, to prevent any negative acts by others.
Talking about incentive, there's no incentive. Something worth because people decide it's valuable.