What's puzzling is how often FOSS advocates, especially from the permissive camp, frame the idea of contributing code as a purely altruistic action, in that cod

What's puzzling is how often FOSS advocates, especially from the permissive camp, frame the idea of contributing code as a purely altruistic action, in that code should be open-sourced and contributed back to because it is the Right Thing to do, resulting in warm fuzzies. The code is both the means and the end: you have the code, do as you wish with it, and please do contribute back if you've made any useful improvements. Now consider the original motivation behind the GPL, which is to ensure software freedom [1]. Being open-source is merely a necessary prerequisite for software freedom. The GPL is much less idealistic than permissive licenses, and more practical about ensuring its goals. RMS had no illusions about the motivations of people and companies; the GPL's absolute requirement for open-ness is an acknowledgement that there will be licensees who are more than happy to use FOSS software against the spirit in which it was intended. One side effect of the GPL's demands for open-ness is that when FOSS usage reaches a critical mass, companies will have no choice but to employ programmers that work on free software. These programmers will then contribute back as necessary, creating a self-sustaining FOSS ecosystem. This is already happening with Linux. In a perfect world full of truly free/libre software, we probably wouldn't have articles like this complaining about "unpaid OSS labor" and GitHub resume padding. The playing ground will be evened out, and there will be proportionately fewer developers contributing because of "love and a lot of free time." In that sense, developers who contribute to FOSS under non-copyleft licenses are doing a disservice to the rest of us who don't have that luxury. [1] The phrase 'software freedom' is used very specifically to refer to software that satisfies the four freedoms: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html