Only Idiots Don't Give Back To Free Software

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.

Misleading headline and summary

[bonch]

The context of the statement was (intentionally) left out of the headline and summary. This isn't about end-users. Zemlin is talking about the financial incentive for contributing back to projects whose code a business or other organization is using. In other words, if your business tries to do things on its own, such as maintaining its own kernel, it's making an idiotic business decision because it's not benefiting from collective maintenance and improvement.

Here is the relevant section in the article:

Zemlin, who spoke with Network World editors at the recent LinuxCon event, used to preach that contributing back was important on moral grounds, as the "right thing to do." But now he says, "It doesn't matter. I don't care if anyone contributes back." Sooner or later, he believes contributing will become an obvious business decision. It's "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. You're an idiot because the whole reason you're using open source is to collectively share in development and collectively maintain the software. Let me tell you, maintaining your own version of Linux ain't cheap, and it ain't easy," he says.

He points out that Red Hat is one of the largest contributors to the kernel and also one of the most successful Linux distros. "So if some aren't giving back as much as others today, I just think it will naturally happen over time. It always is in their business interest to do so," Zemlin says.

Re:Anyone should be free to decide

[hawkinspeter]

GPL doesn't put any prohibitions on the end-user - it's only when you distribute it that you have to make the source available.

Re:Anyone should be free to decide

[Chris Burke]

So basically the GPL was created specifically to tell people what they cannot do.

Yes. It is there to tell you that you cannot withhold from others the very freedoms you were granted.

"Free to do anything but restrict the freedom of others" is only "non-free" to sociopaths.

Re:Anyone should be free to decide

[turbidostato]

"Simple. Less."

Simple. Wrong.

If you take a code under the GPL and block the licence what you get is code under default copyright laws.

Tell me now that you can do more out of a piece of code under default copyright law than under GPL, please.