2. Considering, as I've explained, that only a small fraction of the sidechains built by Blockstream could be supported by SPVproof+MM then I see their proposal as ANY OTHER WHITE PAPER that proposes an improvement on an existing technology that could serve the greater good of the community and not only them because.. you know.. OPEN SOURCE.
It is likely that their business model is not entirely dependent on SPVproof. The unethical thing to do would've been to keep for themselves this potentially revolutionary technology.
Is Blockstream
only writing OPEN SOURCE code forever and into the future?
Or is your argument that Blockstream can not benefit from changing the Bitcoin protocol to suit their business because
Bitcoin is open source?
(This it seems would be a weird thing to claim.)
There wasn't a possibility to keep for themselves this revolutionary technology.
It was funded by a EU grant to an Israel academic team, and the results published and presented openly at Bitcoin2013 conference, and elsewhere.
I was in the room for that presentation, as was gmaxwell and many others. The technology is open, it is the implementation/company that isn't.
I wish them every success.