Ask HN: Why aren't we penalising companies for not contributing to open source?
Companies often complain about taxation and various costs of doing business eg salaries. Yet they also use open source software and don't contribute back. A lot are making source code changes and aren't passing them back either. Often in violation of the license (gpl) or even simply the spirit in which they received the code (open source in general). Why don't we change the social landscape so that companies that don't contribute something back are seen as unethical? Eg A for-profit organisation providing web services using a host of open source software can afford to support those projects. The license associated with the project shouldn't matter. Even if it's been released bsd, mit etc and there's no explicit obligation. Maybe penalising is wrong approach. Perhaps incentivising would be better? Or is this all a bad idea? Thoughts? 0 comments on Hacker News.
Companies often complain about taxation and various costs of doing business eg salaries. Yet they also use open source software and don't contribute back. A lot are making source code changes and aren't passing them back either. Often in violation of the license (gpl) or even simply the spirit in which they received the code (open source in general). Why don't we change the social landscape so that companies that don't contribute something back are seen as unethical? Eg A for-profit organisation providing web services using a host of open source software can afford to support those projects. The license associated with the project shouldn't matter. Even if it's been released bsd, mit etc and there's no explicit obligation. Maybe penalising is wrong approach. Perhaps incentivising would be better? Or is this all a bad idea? Thoughts?
Companies often complain about taxation and various costs of doing business eg salaries. Yet they also use open source software and don't contribute back. A lot are making source code changes and aren't passing them back either. Often in violation of the license (gpl) or even simply the spirit in which they received the code (open source in general). Why don't we change the social landscape so that companies that don't contribute something back are seen as unethical? Eg A for-profit organisation providing web services using a host of open source software can afford to support those projects. The license associated with the project shouldn't matter. Even if it's been released bsd, mit etc and there's no explicit obligation. Maybe penalising is wrong approach. Perhaps incentivising would be better? Or is this all a bad idea? Thoughts? 0 comments on Hacker News.
Companies often complain about taxation and various costs of doing business eg salaries. Yet they also use open source software and don't contribute back. A lot are making source code changes and aren't passing them back either. Often in violation of the license (gpl) or even simply the spirit in which they received the code (open source in general). Why don't we change the social landscape so that companies that don't contribute something back are seen as unethical? Eg A for-profit organisation providing web services using a host of open source software can afford to support those projects. The license associated with the project shouldn't matter. Even if it's been released bsd, mit etc and there's no explicit obligation. Maybe penalising is wrong approach. Perhaps incentivising would be better? Or is this all a bad idea? Thoughts?
Hacker News story: Ask HN: Why aren't we penalising companies for not contributing to open source?
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October 24, 2018
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