Comment Re:*sigh* (Score 1) 117
Personally, if I'm working on my own time on open source then I don't care if someone does not give back or not. It is not my role to enforce altruism or a sense of community. I'm just going to share the code.
And as the copyright holder, thats your right, just as its the copyright holder's right to impose pretty much any licence they choose on their code.
For small projects I'd do the same too, but for big projects (where there is a whole community using them), it seems fair for people who are profitting from them to give back to the community. I'm not demanding that they spend countless development hours improving software purely for the community, but I do think that if they are making those improvements *anyway* then the community should get to benefit.
What I don't get is the (quite common) perception that GPLed code is somehow worse than commercially licenced code - in both cases you have to adhere to the licence conditions and if you don't you get sued. Sure, people "accidentally" include random code they found on the web in commercial projects without bothering to check the licence, and when they are discovered they might have to pay damages and they certainly have to either stop using that code or start complying with the licence - they would have similar problems whether they ripped off GPLed code, or some proprietary stuff from Microsoft (for example). In fact, they're probably better off with GPLed code because at least they then get a "release all the source and you can carry on" option, which the likes of MS wouldn't give them.