Seems like you missed the part where I literally typed "giving back." Or that I literally contributed part of the hashicorp codebase, specifically vault. And it's been hard continuing to do that at $DAYJOB consistently, so I've hacked on a side project in my spare time (also open sourcing plenty of useful tools during that hacking) as a means to the end of eventually finding ways to keep giving back directly and teaching others to do the same.
with all due respect, unless "giving back" means giving them money, its probably not worth what you think its worth. I maintain some small projects, and most of the people "giving back" contribute such a tiny amount of code that its almost not worth mentioning.
that might not be your situation, but I know as a maintainer, in most cases I would much prefer a monetary contribution than a pull request. edit, 2015, ouch:
Not sure what you're getting at with your edit. I'll try to assume positive intent.
I maintain quite a few projects as well, also pretty small. Code to me means a great deal more than a small amount of money. The money is nothing compared to what I've made in my career thanks almost entirely to the code that exists publicly and my ability to run and modify it as needed to learn. I am glad to get code because it tells me something is useful enough for someone else to bother, which to me is what giving back is all about.
> The money is nothing compared to what I've made in my career
right, but thats not the case for everyone. you have been fortunate, but for many they cant even pay their bills with the tiny donations that come in. hence why the need arises for a license like this. to force people to either go away, or pay up.
as you've noticed, its not ideal. in a perfect world I would license my code without restriction, but I need to pay rent like everyone else.
Imagine that someone see your open-source code and creates a competitor product by assimilating it...
Imagine that this entity is much bigger than you even...
People downvote but from a strategic point of view it makes no sense at all.
It's all good because usually open-source is an investment for bigger companies that they can recoup somewhere else.
But for small-players, it makes absolutely no sense to create a business and also make it easy for competitors to compete or even for competitors to appear.
But people probably realize that otherwise there wouldn't be so many debates.
Who funds open-source? (not talking about source-available but the most permissive Open-Source licenses)
