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There may be companies which take from BSD/MIT/Apache 2.0-licensed projects without giving back, but I also see plenty of companies who do give back. Examples:

There may be companies which take from BSD/MIT/Apache 2.0-licensed projects without giving back, but I also see plenty of companies who do give back. Examples: - The Apache Foundation - LLVM/Clang - FreeBSD - Google Heck, even Microsoft has started releasing code under the Apache 2.0 license (e.g., https://github.com/fsharp/fsharp https://github.com/fsharp/fsharp).

wslh 14y ago
Google plays that game because it is an excellent press and can receive zillions of free lines code. But they don't give you any piece of their "cloud machine" just things that don't risk their business. The case of Microsoft is different because the desktop/server/mobile source code is their key asset.
- profquail 14y ago
  So, what you're saying is: a company could open-source "zillions" of lines of code that are useful to individuals, businesses, and non-profit organizations around the world, but if that code doesn't include the implementation of the company's core business product then it's all worthless or non-beneficial to the world?
  - wslh 14y ago
    No, I am not saying that. I am saying: don't be naive.
fafner 14y ago
FreeBSD has to beg for funding http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/12/12/09/1726222/freebsd-project-falls-short-of-year-end-funding-target-by-nearly-50 http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/12/12/09/1726222/freebsd-proje... I think the BSD's are not a good example here in general. Most commercial Unices use bits and pieces from BSD without contributing much back. Just look at Linux where companies are forced to contribute back and thus the momentum it gained. Certainly there are big projects under BSD-style licenses which get plenty of contributions back. But I think it's far more interesting how smaller projects do. For a big project it's in many cases better to contribute back because then upstream has to maintain your changes. Small libraries and tools however are quickly copied and dumped into the code base and nobody even bothers trying to send anything upstream. YMMV
- profquail 14y ago
  FreeBSD doesn't need to "beg" for funding. They do however, need more awareness about the project to get more people and companies involved. That story about falling short of their fundraising goal -- I submitted it both here and on Slashdot, not realizing that most people/companies who donate money to the FreeBSD Foundation do so in the last two weeks of the year (for tax reasons or whatever). As it turned out, thanks to the huge amount of traffic they received from those stories, they raised 50% more than their goal and are now funding project proposals, sponsoring conferences, and much more: http://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com/2013/04/raise-million-spend-million.html http://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com/2013/04/raise-million-... I agree that small libraries and tools could be quickly copied into the codebase and forgotten about, but I question whether this is as much of an issue for any languages/platforms where you can dynamically link/load binaries (e.g., JVM, .NET) and you have decent package managers available (e.g., NuGet). In those cases, I think it's so simple to pull in outside libraries and use them that it's just easier for companies to contribute any fixes upstream instead of doing the work to maintain their own separate forks.
qb45 14y ago
Some companies contribute to LLVM or FreeBSD because they are users of this software and sharing development costs with others benefits them. The story could be different if they were in the business of selling closed-source compilers or OS's. Unix was a legal mess because companies sold their customized forks and fought each other. Linux started as a poor man's clone of Unix but it took off because due to GPL there was no business in fragmenting and killing it.
- dragonwriter 14y ago
  > Some companies contribute to LLVM or FreeBSD because they are users of this software and sharing development costs with others benefits them. The story could be different if they were in the business of selling closed-source compilers or OS's. SQLite project (public domain, which is pretty much equivalent to permissive open source) gets lots of support from people selling closed source work incorporating it. So does BSD-licensed PostgreSQL. There's actually a lot more incentive for commercial downstream players to contribute to a permissive open source project than a GPL one -- particularly a GPL one that is run by a commercial player and has a copyright assignment requirement. > Linux started as a poor man's clone of Unix but it took off because due to GPL there was no business in fragmenting and killing it. I thin the GPL was more important when Linux was first taking off than it is now, because the viability of F/OSS and its utility to commercial players had to be proven, so a license which compelled people distributing work to make it available under similar terms was necessary. But that's been done now. The case has been made.

wslh 14y ago

Google plays that game because it is an excellent press and can receive zillions of free lines code. But they don't give you any piece of their "cloud machine" just things that don't risk their business. The case of Microsoft is different because the desktop/server/mobile source code is their key asset.

profquail 14y ago
So, what you're saying is: a company could open-source "zillions" of lines of code that are useful to individuals, businesses, and non-profit organizations around the world, but if that code doesn't include the implementation of the company's core business product then it's all worthless or non-beneficial to the world?
- wslh 14y ago
  No, I am not saying that. I am saying: don't be naive.

fafner 14y ago

FreeBSD has to beg for funding http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/12/12/09/1726222/freebsd-project-falls-short-of-year-end-funding-target-by-nearly-50 http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/12/12/09/1726222/freebsd-proje... I think the BSD's are not a good example here in general. Most commercial Unices use bits and pieces from BSD without contributing much back. Just look at Linux where companies are forced to contribute back and thus the momentum it gained. Certainly there are big projects under BSD-style licenses which get plenty of contributions back. But I think it's far more interesting how smaller projects do. For a big project it's in many cases better to contribute back because then upstream has to maintain your changes. Small libraries and tools however are quickly copied and dumped into the code base and nobody even bothers trying to send anything upstream. YMMV

profquail 14y ago
FreeBSD doesn't need to "beg" for funding. They do however, need more awareness about the project to get more people and companies involved. That story about falling short of their fundraising goal -- I submitted it both here and on Slashdot, not realizing that most people/companies who donate money to the FreeBSD Foundation do so in the last two weeks of the year (for tax reasons or whatever). As it turned out, thanks to the huge amount of traffic they received from those stories, they raised 50% more than their goal and are now funding project proposals, sponsoring conferences, and much more: http://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com/2013/04/raise-million-spend-million.html http://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com/2013/04/raise-million-... I agree that small libraries and tools could be quickly copied into the codebase and forgotten about, but I question whether this is as much of an issue for any languages/platforms where you can dynamically link/load binaries (e.g., JVM, .NET) and you have decent package managers available (e.g., NuGet). In those cases, I think it's so simple to pull in outside libraries and use them that it's just easier for companies to contribute any fixes upstream instead of doing the work to maintain their own separate forks.

qb45 14y ago

Some companies contribute to LLVM or FreeBSD because they are users of this software and sharing development costs with others benefits them. The story could be different if they were in the business of selling closed-source compilers or OS's. Unix was a legal mess because companies sold their customized forks and fought each other. Linux started as a poor man's clone of Unix but it took off because due to GPL there was no business in fragmenting and killing it.

dragonwriter 14y ago
> Some companies contribute to LLVM or FreeBSD because they are users of this software and sharing development costs with others benefits them. The story could be different if they were in the business of selling closed-source compilers or OS's. SQLite project (public domain, which is pretty much equivalent to permissive open source) gets lots of support from people selling closed source work incorporating it. So does BSD-licensed PostgreSQL. There's actually a lot more incentive for commercial downstream players to contribute to a permissive open source project than a GPL one -- particularly a GPL one that is run by a commercial player and has a copyright assignment requirement. > Linux started as a poor man's clone of Unix but it took off because due to GPL there was no business in fragmenting and killing it. I thin the GPL was more important when Linux was first taking off than it is now, because the viability of F/OSS and its utility to commercial players had to be proven, so a license which compelled people distributing work to make it available under similar terms was necessary. But that's been done now. The case has been made.