Having an entity that’s sorta kinda government (I assume that the Brazilian Federal Bank is somewhat independent) develop and run Pix brings an interesting set of problems with it, including how it should be regulated and by whom. Open sourcing the platform’s software is only one form of audit/refulation. So maybe the source is secure and maybe another entity could run it but could another entity participate in the Pix network or would they have to establish their own separate one?

>>So maybe the source is secure and maybe another entity could run it but could another entity participate in the Pix network or would they have to establish their own separate one?

MInd you, the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB) does have administrative autonomy. But under Brazilian law, it still counts as part of the public administration when it comes to digital systems developed using public funds.

So the legal issue isn’t about how “independent” the BCB is — it's about the origin of the software and who paid for its development. If Pix was created exclusively by a government entity, Law 14.063/2021, Article 16 requires it to be released under an open-source license. That’s the core of my point — a legal compliance issue, not a technical or governance judgment.

As for your broader question: yes, open-sourcing the platform wouldn’t necessarily mean other entities could plug into Pix directly. Participation in the network still depends on BCB regulations, trust, compliance layers, and access controls. Open code is transparency, not necessarily interoperability.

But in a system as critical as Pix, open code would at least allow independent auditing, public scrutiny, and possibly innovation through forks or parallel implementations — even if those don’t run on the live network.

So I agree — it’s a multi-layered governance issue. But transparency of publicly funded code is a foundational first step. That’s what the law mandates — and what hasn’t yet been fulfilled.