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"This is sad and in my opinion companies like this are bad users of FOSS." It might be 'sad' to you, but it's the only reason FOSS has gotten so popular in the
by paulhauggis 11y ago
"This is sad and in my opinion companies like this are bad users of FOSS."
It might be 'sad' to you, but it's the only reason FOSS has gotten so popular in the last 10 years. When a company gets large enough and depends on it enough, they will hire developers to actually fix and contribute to FOSS. With almost all major projects, this is the case.
"It's really depressing to hear things like this and I feel I'm doing a disservice to the FOSS community for working at shitty companies like this even though I depend on the job to pay my bills."
How is it 'shitty'? FOSS is free. Which means the freedom to use it and not contribute back. It's pretty shitty to put the blame on them for not giving back to the community.
Also, they are paying you to work there.
- informatimago 11y agoYou should read the licenses again. It's not $free, and if a corporation distributes a derived work (in any form, source, binary, firmware), then it has to provide the sources and their modifications, and their derived works along, depending on the license, and some other requirements (such as mention of copyright, etc). When you buy a hardware box, often you don't get the sources of the firmware containing the GPL linux kernel in it! That's clear violation of the license terms.
- shoo 11y agoYour point is valid but you are perhaps overgeneralising: there are more FOSS licenses than the GPL, and there are many examples where it is perfectly legal to use FOSS software commercially without contributing anything back or providing source.
- atinoda-kestrel 11y agoFOSS != GPL. I've written plenty of stuff under the BSD license which has been distributed with and without modifications in tons of commercial products, rarely with source. Totally fine, and exactly as I intended.