No, it is ethical- when agreed in advance- and appropriate to make something the client has paid for available to others when the client does not have a proprie

No, it is ethical- when agreed in advance- and appropriate to make something the client has paid for available to others when the client does not have a proprietary interest. In the larger build vs buy investment process those contributions reduce gross expenditure aggregated across all clients. Many clients understand this. However, open sourcing a library often involves considerable work that is not material to the client's interest- documentation for a generic audience, test cases that cover surface not relevant to the client, or things like ticket management/triage. None of that can be charged to the client. And some clients, even though they understand the ecosystem benefit, are not going to agree to participate. They may have their own IP processes that require review and approval to ensure proprietary interests are not compromised, and that is just too expensive.