The fight over open source 'leeches'

[Lakshmipathi]

The fight over open source 'leeches' | Open Source - InfoWorld

"The general mentality of the industry frustrates me; the attitude to take advantage of something
like open source and not give back anything to the system"

I 100% agree with this statement.For example,I have created an open source project,the enterprises will use open sourced project and modify it code to match their clients requirement and deliver and make money.

While the original programmer who created the software,gets nothing - either feedback or money. Though open source programmers,don't work for me money.

The difference is a programmer sees "open source" as a movement,
while enterprise views "open source" just as busniess of making money.

I always had strong feeling ,that open source must be open for individual or small startups (who will contribute back to community).It must not be open for big enterprise unless they support the community,in some form.

[Lakshmipathi]

I'm just posting again my entire comments from that site

I'm an open source programmer. I agree with this statement "The general mentality of the industry frustrates me; the attitude to take advantage of something like open source and not give back anything to the system"

The difference is a programmer sees "open source" as a movement, while enterprise views "open source" just as busniess of making money.

I always had strong feeling ,that open source must be open for individual or small startups (who will contribute back to community).It must not be open for big enterprise unless they support the community,in some form.

open source programmers _not_ jealous or greedy of enterprise for making money out of open sourced programs,but extremely angry for not giving any back to community.

So What I (I assume most open source programmers) want from Enterprise leeches ?

1)Sponser new an open source project or Support already existing open source project.

2)Enterprise uses an open source project named "XY" It not necessary you should support project XY ,the open source programmer "XY" ,would be happy to see enterprise supporting another oss project "YZ".Atleast Enterprise is supporting an oss project,thought It's not mine.

3)Release(alreast one project per annum)one of your project(the project may be 5 years old) as under open source.

If Enterprise can do atleast one of above said 3 points,I don't think open source programmers will be worried about enterprises using opensource project for their internal use. or making business out of it.

[GNU-Fan]

while enterprise views "open source" just as busniess of making money.

I think the unlucky decision to abandon the term "Free Software" and only speak about the practical advantages (for businesses) of "Open Source" is partly to blame for this. If you only mention points like "our software is stable, powerful and very cheap", it is natural that you mostly attract parties whose sole interest is to maximize profit.

Either way, I think "Open Source" software does a good job at leveling the playfield, as long as it is copylefted (GPL & co). Yes, the company is free to use it for whatever purpose, but so is everybody else.

I 100% agree with this statement.For example,I have created an open source project,the enterprises will use open sourced project and modify it code to match their clients requirement and deliver and make money.

If they deliver to clients, they redistribute. As your software seems to be copyrighted and licensed under GPL, you have gained two things already:
a) The improvements done by the company spread. Sooner or later a client of them will exercise its rights under the GPL and redistribute the improvement back to the commons.

b) You are and stay the principle author of the software and are supposed to be mentioned. So if you apply for a job at these clients in the future, make a remark like "By the way, for some years now, you are using software I wrote, hope you like it."

So it's not all bad

[Lakshmipathi]

I agree with point b

a) The improvements done by the company spread.

that's the major issue, the improvements done the company delivered only to it's clients . Those code changes never the community and client willn't redistribute "his" product (as he spent money on it) to others.

[Jollie_kitten]

Just wondering: once you write some code for a program, can you legally license it under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license?

[Krendoshazin]

I think the unlucky decision to abandon the term "Free Software" and only speak about the practical advantages (for businesses) of "Open Source" is partly to blame for this.

I completely agree. I've always had a problem with the term open source as I feel it is too general, and regular users don't appear to understand exactly what can go under the term open source. Technically a product can be "open source" even without being released to the public - a company in-house project for example. With companies like Microsoft - one of the worst offenders against software freedom - joining the open source bandwagon with their own fully approved open source licences it makes you wonder exactly what the term open source means anymore.
The term open source was created to make free software more palatable to large corporations and businesses, sort of taking a kind of "hippy" ideal of love, sharing, and freedom and putting a marketing spin on it. Thus the use of the term open source - differences of philosophy aside - merely encourages the leeching that we see today purely because it was designed to be so palatable.

Several people are probably thinking, "what good would a change of name do, it would still be the same licence, the same code, we'd still be in the same situation." However, one term says to the company, "You can use my code and make lots of money", while the other says, "This is free and shall remain that way".

[GNU-Fan]

Just wondering: once you write some code for a program, can you legally license it under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license?

Yes. But the CC family was written primarily with artistic works in mind (hence the name) while the GPL family is especially appropriate for software code.
You can use one in place of the other but the termini used might confuse the reader.
(What for example would be the difference between machine readable source and compiled binary when you refer to a bitmap image?)

[Jollie_kitten]

What I actually mean was more like: is there legally a wa, when you write some code for a program, to allow it to be used and modified only for projects which will also be open source? That's what I had in mind when I asked about "Attribution Share-Alike"

[darkrose0510]

What I actually mean was more like: is there legally a wa, when you write some code for a program, to allow it to be used and modified only for projects which will also be open source? That's what I had in mind when I asked about "Attribution Share-Alike"

That's what the GPL does, The GNU General Public License - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)

[Lazydog]

My thoughts on this.

I would really like to see the wording changed to imply and enforce if your code is being use to sell to someone then you should be entitled to royalties.

For example,

1. If a company takes the software and bundles/changes it and then sells it you should be entitled to receive compensation for your work. After all they are using your work to make money why shouldn't you receive some of it.
2. If the company is using your software strictly for internal use and they improve something then they should be required to give this improvement back to the public.
3. If a company is using your software in house without modification or bundling into other software to be sold then it is business as usual.

I have often wonder if companies were required to open up their source code how much of it is really open source?