Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Only Idiots Don't Give Back To Free Software

Posted by Unknown on from the contribute-or-die dept.

Julie188 writes "Downstream projects who take without contributing back to the upstream project defeat the benefit of open source and sooner or later, all organizations developing on top of open source code will realize this, contends Jim Zemlin, executive director of the nonprofit Linux Foundation. So the time for cajoling those users — even commercial projects like Canonical — into participating is over. Contributing is 'not the right thing to do because of some moral issue or because we say you should do it. It's because you are an idiot if you don't,'" he says." Update: 08/30 21:40 GMT by S : Reworded summary to clarify that Zemlin wasn't referring to end users.

10 of 326 comments (clear)

  1. Anyone should be free to decide by ge7 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Contributing back takes money and can be counter-productive for the community too - especially if it's introduces lots of buggy or bad code. Someone has to go through all of that. This is especially true because whatever you say, making actual contributions takes time and isn't really high in the list of companies priorities. You can say all you want about short-term thinking, but it's just a fact of life. Companies can't really do anything with it - unlike most people seem to think, many companies are working with really strict budgets too. They don't have unlimited access to cash or resources.

    If you truly believe in open source, you should let anyone to decide what they do with the code. Some will contribute back, and those will be good contributions. Then some won't, nothing is lost. The same is why I think BSD license is much better GPL - if you truly believe in freedom, you let everyone to decide themselves. After all, open source was created to free people from proprietary code and people telling them what they can't do.

    1. Re:Anyone should be free to decide by Microlith · · Score: 3, Insightful

      open source was created to free people from proprietary code and people telling them what they can't do.

      The GPL was created to ensure that the user would ALWAYS have access to the source code, regardless of how they acquired it, and would be free to modify it as they saw fit. It was specifically designed so that the code could not be made proprietary, and grants users permission to do what the laws would otherwise deny you the right to on the condition you give others the same freedom you were granted.

      It is not, at all, about telling other people what they can and cannot do.

    2. Re:Anyone should be free to decide by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Contributing back takes money

      Money they saved by going open source. It will cost less to help collectively maintain open software than it will to purchase a license for proprietary software.

      This is especially true because whatever you say, making actual contributions takes time and isn't really high in the list of companies priorities

      If they're using open source software, they must value what that software does for them. If nobody helps maintain it, it will go away. Complaining about contributing back to open source software is like complaining about the food you have to buy for the goose that lays golden eggs.

      They don't have unlimited access to cash or resources.

      Yes, the argument is that it's more economical to contribute to a healthy OSS ecosystem than it is to either leech off of an unhealthy OSS ecosystem or buy proprietary.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    3. Re:Anyone should be free to decide by Duradin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Wouldn't have had it to even consider to start with and GPL might as well be proprietary for a little as you can make use of it.

      BSD code doesn't disappear when someone takes it proprietary. It's still there for you to monkey with.

    4. Re:Anyone should be free to decide by kthreadd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sure. The point is that if you're working on a proprietary project then why do you think you should have the right to take GPL-licensed code? What makes it different from completely closed code that you can't even see at all? By all means use code that is permissively licensed and be thankful for it, if GPL isn't open enough then just don't use it.

    5. Re:Anyone should be free to decide by Chris+Burke · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But you are restricting the freedoms of anyone that uses your GPL ridden code.

      Restricting their freedom to restrict freedom.

      Anyone capable of caring about the freedom of anyone but themselves -- i.e. not a sociopath -- can see that this minimal restriction maximizes freedom for everyone.

      You are not free to own slaves. Therefore your freedom is restricted? This makes you less free? Or is freedom maximized for everyone, because nobody -- including you -- can be made a slave?

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
  2. Shockingly... by Mongoose+Disciple · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hardcore open source (well, fill in anything here, but in this case it's an open source guy) advocate thinks doing thinks the way he thinks should be done is smart, and doing things other ways is stupid.

    For someone who's a professional advocate for Open Source, I don't think he makes a very compelling argument that it's in everyone's enlightened self-interest to give as well as take. Certainly I've seen better arguments to that effect in slashdot comments.

  3. No, you're an idiot! by newcastlejon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not for trying to get money for the people you represent, but for calling people idiots and expecting them to open their wallets.

    --
    If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
  4. Re:Misleading headline and summary by Shikaku · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why isn't your quote the summary?

  5. Linux Foundation hasn't found any PR people, then. by jimicus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Network World and /. have both given this story an unnecessarily inflammatory slant. Zemlin's argument is "Maintaining your own fork of Linux for your product or service is an absurdly large amount of work for precious little return - if you let your business put much time into such things when there's no benefit to your business maintaining its own fork; it could simply pass patches upstream and let upstream take on some of the maintenance worries, you're being an idiot".

    Arguably, there is some logic to this. Lots of companies sell Linux appliances - either as virtual appliances, pre-loaded on hardware or as embedded systems - make changes to lots of things but never submit patches upstream.

    I think I'm starting to see why corporate PR-spun statements are always so bland. There's no way a corporate PR department would let something like that through precisely because of the likelihood of such slanted articles resulting from it.