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How history repeats. A company takes a BSD-licenced work, closes the source, and makes money selling "improvements" while the original authors get nothing. Ins

• nodemaker 11y ago
  is it really that unusual in our industry to work for money :) ?
  • mitchi 11y ago
    How is it different than someone selling barely modified WordPress websites? I'm not into that line of work but obviously, many small businesses in America rely on selling custom open source software.
• RogerL 11y ago
  And, instances like this is why some of us use licenses like BSD, CC-BY, and so on. It's not an abuse to do this, it is allowed by the license, and we choose licenses based on how we want our work to be used. To put some context on this, I work for companies that don't release source. One of those 'companies' was the U.S. Government, and sorry, but you can't release classified work (plenty of other Government code is open, and I mailed plenty of CDs in the day). I'd rather they use my work and remain closed source, than not use my work, or use it without my knowledge. As it is, they can legally and ethically use my work, then can file problem reports, push fixes if they want, and otherwise participate. It's not a bad thing; it's a choice.
• zvrba 11y ago
  The original authors spent exactly zero hours on designing and implementing the improvements. Why should they get anything? They work for satisfaction and money provided by apple and other companies sponsoring the project. By your reasoning, when somebody makes money on anything, everybody in the whole production chain should get a cut. Obviously, that's not how economy in general works.