May turn out to be a little tangential, but do read Cory Doctorow's article on IP - https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/ https://locusmag.com/2020/09/

May turn out to be a little tangential, but do read Cory Doctorow's article on IP - https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/ https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/ - if you haven't already. A few things stand out in your request for me (imho) - 1. Open sourcing software in order to get free contributions is .. not a fair exchange. In most circumstances, your software is likely only useful to your company, or one that builds something off your tool for a competing product ... or attract uncouth elements like what happened with DigitalOcean's OSS contrib promotion earlier. 2. Open sourcing components that facilitate _interop_ with other systems seems worth it and would help your ecosystem grow while also serving your users. Do you have pieces you can cordon off like that? 3. You're already making a contribution to society by building your product. So don't beat yourself up about not "contributing to open source". 4. If you're prepared to pay your contributors, might as well spend that budget hiring staff to work on your product? It would save a lot of effort in figuring out who to compensate, besides you'll need a few folks in your company paying attention to what's happening with your repos instead of working on your product .. thus potentially reducing velocity.