>Expecting the freeloading corporations that benefit from open-source software to contribute fairly is, I think, unrealistic. If you don't want people to benef

>Expecting the freeloading corporations that benefit from open-source software to contribute fairly is, I think, unrealistic. If you don't want people to benefit from work you voluntarily put into the commons, then don't put it into the commons. Corporations are just groups of people. Who gets to decide that this group of people over here can legitimately benefit from the commons, but these other people over there can't? That's not a commons anymore. If you want to put restrictions on who can or cannot benefit from your work, then put those restrictions on the work when you release it. But don't then claim you put it into the commons, you didn't. If you want to benefit privately from your work, what on earth are you doing giving it away? Surely a big bunch of people coming along, picking up that work and using it to provide incredibly useful services to lots of people, benefiting thousands or millions of other people at much lower cost than they otherwise could is a good thing, right? How is that not a massive success? The problem with people like this guy and Elastic, etc, is they don't actually want to give things away for free. They actually want to get paid. Ok, fine, I have no problem with that, just for goodness sake be honest about it.