> Times are different now Now. But what about tomorrow? Neither you nor I can know what tomorrow will bring. But should it revert back to the old status-quo,

> Times are different now Now. But what about tomorrow? Neither you nor I can know what tomorrow will bring. But should it revert back to the old status-quo, what then? What if these self-same companies take all of the nice BSD/MIT/non-GPL'd code, package it up, make it better - so much so that people prefer it over the original! - and sell it, and make a mint off it, and it becomes much more popular. They continue to extend it, but never give anything back to the original authors, and perhaps the original project dies from lack of use by people, and faltering participation of developers because no one is using it. So now - wonderful open source software goes from being open - to closed and proprietary. The users don't care - they are getting great value for their money, right? But the software, which was once open and useful for the developers, is virtually gone. Don't think it could ever change back to this? Don't be a fool. Maybe not in 5 years, or 10 - or maybe it will! History does repeat - or at least echoes loud and clearly. Being prepared for such a possibility is better, in my perspective, than assuming the way things are today is the way they'll always be going forward.